why is confucianism important essay

Friday Essay: an introduction to Confucius, his ideas and their lasting relevance

Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, The University of Western Australia

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The man widely known in the English language as Confucius was born around 551 BCE in today’s southern Shandong Province. Confucius is the phonic translation of the Chinese word Kong fuzi 孔夫子, in which Kong 孔 was his surname and fuzi is an honorific for learned men.

Widely credited for creating the system of thought we now call Confucianism, this learned man insisted he was “not a maker but a transmitter”, merely “believing in and loving the ancients”. In this, Confucius could be seen as acting modestly and humbly, virtues he thought of highly.

Or, as Kang Youwei — a leading reformer in modern China has argued — Confucius tactically framed his revolutionary ideas as lost ancient virtues so his arguments would be met with fewer criticisms and less hostility.

Confucius looked nothing like the great sage in his own time as he is widely known in ours. To his contemporaries, he was perhaps foremost an unemployed political adviser who wandered around different fiefdoms for some years, attempting to sell his political ideas to different rulers — but never able to strike a deal.

It seems Confucius would have preferred to live half a millennium earlier, when China — according to him — was united under benevolent, competent and virtuous rulers at the dawn of the Zhou dynasty. By his own time, China had become a divided land with hundreds of small fiefdoms, often ruled by greedy, cruel or mediocre lords frequently at war.

But this frustrated scholar’s ideas have profoundly shaped politics and ethics in and beyond China ever since his death in 479 BCE. The greatest and the most influential Chinese thinker, his concept of filial piety, remains highly valued among young people in China , despite rapid changes in the country’s demography.

Despite some doubts as to whether many Chinese people take his ideas seriously, the ideas of Confucius remain directly and closely relevant to contemporary China.

This situation perhaps is comparable to Christianity in Australia. Although institutional participation is in constant decline, Christian values and narratives remain influential on Australian politics and vital social matters .

The danger today is in Confucianism being considered the single reason behind China’s success or failure. The British author Martin Jacques, for example, recently asserted Confucianism was the “biggest single reason” for East Asia’s success in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, without giving any explanation or justification.

If Confucius were alive, he would probably not hesitate to call out this solitary root of triumph or disaster as being lazy, incorrect and unwise.

Political structure and mutual responsibilities

Confucius wanted to restore good political order by persuading rulers to reestablish moral standards, exemplify appropriate social relations, perform time-honoured rituals and provide social welfare.

He worked hard to promote his ideas but won few supporters. Almost every ruler saw punishment and military force as shortcuts to greater power.

It was not until 350 years later during the reign of the Emperor Wu of Han that Confucianism was installed as China’s state ideology.

But this state-sanctioned version of Confucianism was not an honest revitalisation of Confucius’ ideas. Instead, it absorbed many elements from rival schools of thought, notably legalism , which emerged in the latter half of China’s Warring States period (453–221 BCE). Legalism argued efficient governance relies on impersonal laws and regulations — rather than moral principles and rites.

Like most great thinkers of the Axial Age between the 8th and 3rd century BCE, Confucius did not believe everyone was created equal.

Similar to Plato (born over 100 years later), Confucius believed the ideal society followed a hierarchy. When asked by Duke Jing of Qi about government, Confucius famously replied:

let the ruler be a ruler; the minister, a minister; the father, a father; the son, a son.

However it would be a superficial reading of Confucius to believe he called for unconditional obedience to rulers or superiors. Confucius advised a disciple “not to deceive the ruler but to stand up to them”.

Confucius believed the legitimacy of a regime fundamentally relies on the confidence of the people. A ruler should tirelessly work hard and “lead by example”.

Like in a family, a good son listens to his father, and a good father wins respect not by imposing force or seniority but by offering heartfelt love, support, guidance and care.

In other words, Confucius saw a mutual relationship between the ruler and the ruled.

Love and respect for social harmony

To Confucius, the appropriate relations between family members are not merely metaphors for ideal political orders, but the basic fabrics of a harmonious society.

An essential family value in Confucius’ ideas is xiao 孝, or filial piety, a concept explained in at least 15 different ways in the Analects, a collection of the words from Confucius and his followers.

Read more: Can Ne Zha, the Chinese superhero with $1b at the box office, teach us how to raise good kids?

Depending on the context, Confucius defined filial piety as respecting parents, as “never diverging” from parents, as not letting parents feel unnecessary anxiety, as serving parents with etiquette when they are alive, and as burying and commemorating parents with propriety after they pass away.

Confucius expected rulers to exemplify good family values. When Ji Kang Zi, the powerful prime minister of Confucius’ home state of Lu asked for advice on keeping people loyal to the realm, Confucius responded by asking the ruler to demonstrate filial piety and benignity ( ci 慈).

Confucius viewed moral and ethical principles not merely as personal matters, but as social assets. He profoundly believed social harmony ultimately relies on virtuous citizens rather than sophisticated institutions.

In the ideas of Confucius, the most important moral principle is ren 仁, a concept that can hardly be translated into English without losing some of its meaning.

Like filial piety, ren is manifested in the love and respect one has for others. But ren is not restricted among family members and does not rely on blood or kinship. Ren guides people to follow their conscience. People with ren have strong compassion and empathy towards others.

Translators arguing for a single English equivalent for ren have attempted to interpret the concept as “benevolence”, “humanity”, “humanness” and “goodness”, none of which quite capture the full significance of the term.

The challenge in translating ren is not a linguistic one. Although the concept appears more than 100 times in the Analects, Confucius did not give one neat definition. Instead, he explained the term in many different ways.

As summarised by China historian Daniel Gardner , Confucius defined ren as:

to love others, to subdue the self and return to ritual propriety, to be respectful, tolerant, trustworthy, diligent, and kind, to be possessed of courage, to be free from worry, or to be resolute and firm.

Instead of searching for an explicit definition of ren , it is perhaps wise to view the concept as an ideal type of the highest and ultimate virtue Confucius believed good people should pursue.

Relevance in contemporary China

Confucius’ thinking hs had a profound impact on almost every great Chinese thinker since. Based upon his ideas, Mencius (372–289 BCE) and Xunzi (c310–c235 BCE) developed different schools of thought within the system of Confucianism.

Arguing against these ideas, Mohism (4th century BCE), Daoism (4th century BCE), Legalism (3rd century BCE) and many other influential systems of thought emerged in the 400 years after Confucius’ time, going on to shape many aspects of the Chinese civilisation in the last two millennia.

Modern China has a complicated relationship with Confucius and his ideas.

Since the early 20th century, many intellectuals influenced by western thought started denouncing Confucianism as the reason for China’s national humiliations since the first Opium War (1839-42).

Confucius received fierce criticism from both liberals and Marxists .

Hu Shih , a leader of China’s New Culture Movement in the 1910s and 1920s and an alumnus of Columbia University , advocated overthrowing the “House of Confucius”.

Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, also repeatedly denounced Confucius and Confucianism. Between 1973 and 1975, Mao devoted the last political campaign in his life against Confucianism.

Read more: To make sense of modern China, you simply can't ignore Marxism

Despite these fierce criticisms and harsh persecutions, Confucius’ ideas remain in the minds and hearts of many Chinese people, both in and outside China.

One prominent example is PC Chang , another Chinese alumnus of Columbia University, who was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on December 10 1948. Thanks to Chang’s efforts , the spirit of some most essential Confucian ideas, such as ren , was deeply embedded in the Declaration.

Today, many Chinese parents, as well as the Chinese state, are keen children be provided a more Confucian education .

In 2004, the Chinese government named its initiative of promoting language and culture overseas after Confucius, and its leadership has been enthusiastically embracing Confucius’ lessons to consolidate their legitimacy and ruling in the 21st century.

Read more: Explainer: what are Confucius Institutes and do they teach Chinese propaganda?

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At different times in Chinese history, Confucius (trad. 551–479 BCE) has been portrayed as a teacher, advisor, editor, philosopher, reformer, and prophet. The name Confucius, a Latinized combination of the surname Kong 孔 with an honorific suffix “Master” ( fuzi 夫子), has also come to be used as a global metonym for different aspects of traditional East Asian society. This association of Confucius with many of the foundational concepts and cultural practices in East Asia, and his casting as a progenitor of “Eastern” thought in Early Modern Europe, make him arguably the most significant thinker in East Asian history. Yet while early sources preserve biographical details about Master Kong, dialogues and stories about him in early texts like the Analects ( Lunyu 論語) reflect a diversity of representations and concerns, strands of which were later differentially selected and woven together by interpreters intent on appropriating or condemning particular associated views and traditions. This means that the philosophy of Confucius is historically underdetermined, and it is possible to trace multiple sets of coherent doctrines back to the early period, each grounded in different sets of classical sources and schools of interpretation linked to his name. After introducing key texts and interpreters, then, this entry explores three principal interconnected areas of concern: a psychology of ritual that describes how ideal social forms regulate individuals, an ethics rooted in the cultivation of a set of personal virtues, and a theory of society and politics based on normative views of the family and the state.

Each of these areas has unique features that were developed by later thinkers, some of whom have been identified as “Confucians”, even though that term is not well-defined. The Chinese term Ru (儒) predates Confucius, and connoted specialists in ritual and music, and later experts in Classical Studies. Ru is routinely translated into English as “Confucian”. Yet “Confucian” is also sometimes used in English to refer to the sage kings of antiquity who were credited with key cultural innovations by the Ru , to sacrificial practices at temples dedicated to Confucius and related figures, and to traditional features of East Asian social organization like the “bureaucracy” or “meritocracy”. For this reason, the term Confucian will be avoided in this entry, which will focus on the philosophical aspects of the thought of Confucius (the Latinization used for “Master Kong” following the English-language convention) primarily, but not exclusively, through the lens of the Analects .

1. Confucius as Chinese Philosopher and Symbol of Traditional Culture

2. sources for confucius’s life and thought, 3. ritual psychology and social values, 4. virtues and character formation, 5. the family and the state, other internet resources, related entries.

Because of the wide range of texts and traditions identified with him, choices about which version of Confucius is authoritative have changed over time, reflecting particular political and social priorities. The portrait of Confucius as philosopher is, in part, the product of a series of modern cross-cultural interactions. In Imperial China, Confucius was identified with interpretations of the classics and moral guidelines for administrators, and therefore also with training the scholar-officials that populated the bureaucracy. At the same time, he was closely associated with the transmission of the ancient sacrificial system, and he himself received ritual offerings in temples found in all major cities. By the Han (202 BCE–220 CE), Confucius was already an authoritative figure in a number of different cultural domains, and the early commentaries show that reading texts associated with him about history, ritual, and proper behavior was important to rulers. The first commentaries to the Analects were written by tutors to the crown prince (e.g., Zhang Yu 張禹, d. 5 BCE), and select experts in the “Five Classics” ( Wujing 五經) were given scholastic positions in the government. The authority of Confucius was such that during the late Han and the following period of disunity, his imprimatur was used to validate commentaries to the classics, encoded political prophecies, and esoteric doctrines.

By the Song period (960–1279), the post-Buddhist revival known as “Neo-Confucianism” anchored readings of the dialogues of Confucius to a dualism between “cosmic pattern” ( li 理) and “ pneumas ” ( qi 氣), a distinctive moral cosmology that marked the tradition off from those of Buddhism and Daoism. The Neo-Confucian interpretation of the Analects by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) integrated the study of the Analects into a curriculum based on the “Four Books” ( Sishu 四書) that became widely influential in China, Korea, and Japan. The pre-modern Confucius was closely associated with good government, moral education, proper ritual performance, and the reciprocal obligations that people in different roles owed each other in such contexts.

When Confucius became a character in the intellectual debates of eighteenth century Europe, he became identified as China’s first philosopher. Jesuit missionaries in China sent back accounts of ancient China that portrayed Confucius as inspired by Natural Theology to pursue the good, which they considered a marked contrast with the “idolatries” of Buddhism and Daoism. Back in Europe, intellectuals read missionary descriptions and translations of Chinese literature, and writers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (1726–1798) praised Confucius for his discovery of universal natural laws through reason. Enlightenment writers celebrated the moral philosophy of Confucius for its independence from the dogmatic influence of the Church. While at times he was criticized as an atheist or an advocate of despotism, many Europeans viewed Confucius as a moral philosopher whose approach was in line with rationalism and humanism.

Today, many descriptions combine these several ways of positioning Confucius, but the modern interpretation of his views has been complicated by a tendency to look back on him as an emblem of the “traditional culture” of China. In the eyes of some late nineteenth and twentieth century reformers who sought to fortify China against foreign influence, the moral teachings of Confucius had the potential to play the same role that they perceived Christianity had done in the modernization of Europe and America, or serve as the basis of a more secular spiritual renewal that would transform the population into citizens of a modern nation-state. In the twentieth century, the pursuit of modernization also led to the rejection of Confucius by some reformers in the May Fourth and New Culture movements, as well as by many in the Communist Party, who identified the traditional hierarchies implicit in his social and political philosophy with the social and economic inequalities that they sought to eliminate. In these modern debates, it is not just the status of Confucius in traditional China that made him such a potent symbol. His specific association with the curriculum of the system of education of scholar-officials in the imperial government, and of traditional moral values more generally, connected him to the aspects of tradition worth preserving, or the things that held China back from modernization, depending on one’s point of view.

As legacies of Confucius tied to traditional ritual roles and the pre-modern social structure were criticized by modernizers, a view of Confucius as a moral philosopher, already common in European readings, gained ascendancy in East Asia. The American-educated historian Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) wrote an early influential history of Chinese philosophy, beginning with Laozi 老子 and Confucius, explicitly on the model of existing histories of Western philosophy. In it, Hu compared what he called the conservative aspect of the philosophy of Confucius to Socrates and Plato. Since at least that time, Confucius has been central to most histories of Chinese philosophy.

Biographical treatments of Confucius, beginning with the “Hereditary House of Confucius” ( Kongzi shijia 孔子世家), a chapter of Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (c.145–c.86 BCE) Records of the Grand Historian ( Shiji 史記), were initially based on information from compilations of independently circulating dialogues and prose accounts. Tying particular elements of his philosophy to the life experiences of Confucius is a risky and potentially circular exercise, since many of the details of his biography were first recorded in instructive anecdotes linked to the expression of didactic messages. Nevertheless, since Sima Qian’s time, the biography of Confucius has been intimately linked with the interpretation of his philosophy, and so this section begins with a brief treatment of traditional tropes about his family background, official career, and teaching of 72 disciples, before turning to the dialogue and prose accounts upon which early biographers like Sima Qian drew.

Confucius was born in the domain of Zou, in modern Shandong Province, south of the larger kingdom of Lu. A date of 551 BCE is given for his birth in the Gongyang Commentary ( Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳) to the classic Spring and Autumn Annals ( Chunqiu 春秋), which places him in the period when the influence of the Zhou polity was declining, and regional domains were becoming independent states. His father, who came from Lu, was descended from a noble clan that included, in Sima Qian’s telling, several people known for their modesty and ritual mastery. His father died when Confucius was a small child, leaving the family poor but with some social status, and as a young man Confucius became known for expertise in the classical ritual and ceremonial forms of the Zhou. In adulthood, Confucius travelled to Lu and began a career as an official in the employ of aristocratic families.

Different sources identify Confucius as having held a large number of different offices in Lu. Entries in the Zuo Commentary ( Zuozhuan 左傳) to the Spring and Autumn Annals for 509 and 500 BCE identify him as Director of Corrections ( Sikou 司寇), and say he was charged with assisting the ruler with the rituals surrounding a visiting dignitary from the state of Qi, respectively. The Mencius ( Mengzi 孟子), a text centered on a figure generally regarded as the most important early developer of the thought of Confucius, Mencius (trad. 372–289 BCE), says Confucius was Foodstuffs Scribe ( Weili 委吏) and Scribe in the Field ( Chengtian 乘田), involved with managing the accounting at the granary and keeping the books on the pasturing of different animals (11.14). [ 1 ] In the first biography, Sima Qian mentions these offices, but then adds a second set of more powerful positions in Lu including Steward ( Zai 宰) managing an estate in the district of Zhongdu, Minister of Works ( Sikong 司空), and even acting Chancellor ( Xiang 相). Following his departure from Lu, different stories place Confucius in the kingdoms of Wei, Song, Chen, Cai, and Chu. Sima Qian crafted these stories into a serial narrative of rulers failing to appreciate the moral worth of Confucius, whose high standards forced him to continue to travel in search of an incorrupt ruler.

Late in life, Confucius left service and turned to teaching. In Sima Qian’s time, the sheer number of independently circulating texts centering on dialogues that Confucius had with his disciples led the biographer to include a separate chapter on “The arranged traditions of the disciples of Confucius” ( Zhong Ni dizi liezhuan 仲尼弟子列傳). His account identifies 77 direct disciples, whom Sima Qian says Confucius trained in ritual practice and the Classic of Odes ( Shijing 詩經), Classic of Documents ( Shujing 書經, also called Documents of the Predecessors or Shangshu 尚書), Records of Ritual ( Liji 禮記) and Classic of Music ( Yuejing 樂經). Altogether, some 3000 students received some form of this training regimen. Sima Qian’s editorial practice in systematizing dialogues was inclusive, and the fact that he was able to collect so much information some three centuries after the death of Confucius testifies to the latter’s importance in the Han period. Looked at in a different way, the prodigious numbers of direct disciples and students of Confucius, and the inconsistent accounts of the offices in which he served, may also be due to a proliferation of texts associating the increasingly authoritative figure of Confucius with divergent regional or interpretive traditions during those intervening centuries.

The many sources of quotations and dialogues of Confucius, both transmitted and recently excavated, provide a wealth of materials about the philosophy of Confucius, but an incomplete sense of which materials are authoritative. The last millennium has seen the development of a conventional view that materials preserved in the twenty chapters of the transmitted Analects most accurately represent Confucius’s original teachings. This derives in part from a second century CE account by Ban Gu 班固 (39–92 CE) of the composition of the Analects that describes the work as having been compiled by first and second generation disciples of Confucius and then transmitted privately for centuries, making it arguably the oldest stratum of extant Confucius sources. In the centuries since, some scholars have come up with variations on this basic account, such as Liu Baonan’s 劉寳楠 (1791–1855) view in Corrected Meanings of the Analects ( Lunyu zhengyi 論語正義) that each chapter was written by a different disciple. Recently, several centuries of doubts about internal inconsistencies in the text and a lack of references to the title in early sources were marshaled by classicist Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚 in an influential 1986 article which argued that the lack of attributed quotations from the Analects , and of explicit references to it, prior to the second century BCE, meant that its traditional status as the oldest stratum of the teachings of Confucius was undeserved. Since then a number of historians, including Michael J. Hunter, have systematically shown that writers started to demonstrate an acute interest in the Analects only in the late second and first centuries BCE, suggesting that other Confucius-related records from those centuries should also be considered as potentially authoritative sources. Some have suggested this critical approach to sources is an attack on the historicity of Confucius, but a more reasonable description is that it is an attack on the authoritativeness of the Analects that broadens and diversifies the sources that may be used to reconstruct the historical Confucius.

Expanding the corpus of Confucius quotations and dialogues beyond the Analects , then, requires attention to three additional types of sources. First, dialogues preserved in transmitted sources like the Records of Ritual, the Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual ( DaDai Liji 大戴禮記), and Han collections like the Family Discussions of Confucius ( Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語) contain a large number of diverse teachings. Second, quotations attached to the interpretation of passages in the classics preserved in works like the Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals , or Han’s Intertextual Commentary on the Odes ( Han Shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳) are particularly rich sources for readings of history and poetry. Finally, a number of recently archaeologically recovered texts from the Han period and before have also expanded the corpus.

Newly discovered sources include three recently excavated versions of texts with parallel to the transmitted Analects . These are the 1973 excavation at the Dingzhou site in Hebei Province dating to 55 BCE; the 1990’s excavation of a partial parallel version at Jongbaekdong in Pyongyang, North Korea, dating to between 62 and 45 BCE; and most recently the 2011–2015 excavation of the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in Jiangxi Province dating to 59 BCE. The Haihun excavation is particularly important because it is thought to contain the two lost chapters of what Han period sources identify as a 22-chapter version of the Analects that circulated in the state of Qi, the titles of which appear to be “Understanding the Way” ( Zhi dao 智道) and “Questions about Jade” ( Wen yu 問玉). While the Haihun Analects has yet to be published, the content of the lost chapters overlaps with a handful of fragments dating to the late first century BCE that were found at the Jianshui Jinguan site in Jinta county in Gansu Province in 1973. All in all, these finds confirm the sudden wide circulation of the Analects in the middle of the first century BCE.

Previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations have also been unearthed. The Dingzhou site also yielded texts given the titles “Sayings of the Ru” ( Rujiazhe yan 儒家者言) and “Duke Ai asked about the five kinds of righteousness” ( Aigong wen wuyi 哀公問五義). A significantly different text also given the name “Sayings of the Ru” was found in 1977 in a Han tomb at Fuyang in Anhui Province. Several texts dating to 168 BCE recording statements by Confucius about the Classic of Changes ( Yijing 易經) were excavated from the Mawangdui site in Hunan Province in 1973. Additionally, a number of Warring States period dialogical texts centered on particular disciples, and a text with interpretative comments by Confucius on the Classic of Poetry given the name “Confucius discusses the Odes ” ( Kongzi shilun 孔子詩論), were looted from tombs in the 1990s, sold on the black market, and made their way to the Shanghai Museum. The 59 BCE tomb of the Marquis of Haihun also contains a number of previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations on ritual and filial piety, along with materials that overlap with sections of transmitted texts including the Analects , Records of Ritual and the Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual . Another unprovenanced manuscript, now curated by Anhui University, “Zhong Ni said” ( Zhong Ni yue 仲尼曰) has around two dozen sayings, seven of which overlap with the modern Analects . Most recently, initial reports about a 2021 excavation at Wangjiazui 王家嘴 in Hubei province of an unknown number of sayings entitled “Kongzi said,” ( Kongzi yue 孔子曰) indicate it only partially overlaps with the Analects . These new finds suggest that a larger number of sayings attributed to Kongzi once circulated together, with certain ones being selected out for inclusion in works like the Records of Ritual and the Analects .

Some excavated texts, like the pre-Han period “Thicket of Sayings” ( Yucong 語叢) apothegms excavated at the Guodian site in Hubei Province in 1993, contain fragments of the Analects in circulation without attribution to Confucius. Transmitted materials also show some of the quotations attributed to Confucius in the Analects in the mouths of other historical figures. The fluidity and diversity of Confucius-related materials in circulation prior to the fixing of the Analects text in the second century BCE, suggest that the Analects itself, with its keen interest in ritual, personal ethics, and politics, may well have been in part a topical selection from a larger and more diverse set of available Confucius-related materials. In other words, there were already multiple topical foci prior to any horizon by which we can definitively deem any single focus to be authoritative. It is for this reason that the essential core of the teachings of Confucius is historically underdetermined, and the correct identification of the core teachings is still avidly debated. The following sections treat three key aspects of the philosophy of Confucius, each different but all interrelated, found throughout many of these diverse sets of sources: a theory of how ritual and musical performance functioned to promote unselfishness and train emotions, advice on how to inculcate a set of personal virtues to prepare people to behave morally in different domains of their lives, and a social and political philosophy that abstracted classical ideals of proper conduct in family and official contexts to apply to more general contexts.

The Records of Ritual , the Analects , and numerous Han collections portray Confucius as being deeply concerned with the proper performance of ritual and music. In such works, the description of the attitudes and affect of the performer became the foundation of a ritual psychology in which proper performance was key to reforming desires and beginning to develop moral dispositions. Confucius sought to preserve the Zhou ritual system, and theorized about how ritual and music inculcated social roles, limited desires and transformed character.

Many biographies begin their description of his life with a story of Confucius at an early age performing rituals, reflecting accounts and statements that demonstrate his prodigious mastery of ritual and music. The archaeological record shows that one legacy of the Zhou period into which Confucius was born was a system of sumptuary regulations that encoded social status. Another of these legacies was ancestral sacrifice, a means to demonstrate people’s reverence for their ancestors while also providing a way to ask the spirits to assist them or to guarantee them protection from harm. The Analects describes the ritual mastery of Confucius in receiving guests at a noble’s home (10.3), and in carrying out sacrifices (10.8, 15.1). He plays the stone chimes (14.39), distinguishes between proper and improper music (15.11, 17.18), and extols and explains the Classic of Odes to his disciples (1.15, 2.2, 8.3, 16.13, 17.9). This mastery of classical ritual and musical forms is an important reason Confucius said he “followed Zhou” (3.14). While he might alter a detail of a ritual out of frugality (9.3), Confucius insists on adherence to the letter of the rites, as when his disciple Zi Gong 子貢 sought to substitute another animal for a sheep in a seasonal sacrifice, saying “though you care about the sheep, I care about the ritual” (3.17). It was in large part this adherence to Zhou period cultural forms, or to what Confucius reconstructed them to be, that has led many in the modern period to label him a traditionalist.

Where Confucius clearly innovated was in his rationale for performing the rites and music. Historian Yan Buke 閻步克 has argued that the early Confucian ( Ru ) tradition began from the office of the “Music master” ( Yueshi 樂師) described in the Ritual of Zhou ( Zhou Li 周禮). Yan’s view is that since these officials were responsible for teaching the rites, music, and the Classic of Odes , it was their combined expertise that developed into the particular vocation that shaped the outlook of Confucius. Early discussions of ritual in the Zhou classics often explained ritual in terms of a do ut des view of making offerings to receive benefits. By contrast, early discussions between Confucius and his disciples described benefits of ritual performance that went beyond the propitiation of spirits, rewards from the ancestors, or the maintenance of the social or cosmic order. Instead of emphasizing goods that were external to the performer, these works stressed the value of the associated interior psychological states of the practitioner. In Analects 3.26, Confucius condemns the performance of ritual without reverence ( jing 敬). He also condemns views of ritual that focus only on the offerings, or views of music that focus only on the instruments (17.11). Passages from the Records of Ritual explain that Confucius would rather have an excess of reverence than an excess of ritual (“ Tangong, shang ” 檀弓上), and that reverence is the most important aspect of mourning rites (“ Zaji, xia ” 雜記下). This emphasis on the importance of an attitude of reverence became the salient distinction between performing ritual in a rote manner, and performing it in the proper affective state. Another passage from the Records of Ritual says the difference between how an ideal gentleman and a lesser person cares for a parent is that the gentleman is reverent when he does it (“ Fangji ” 坊記, cf. Analects 2.7). In contexts concerning both ritual and filial piety ( xiao 孝), the affective state behind the action is arguably more important than the action’s consequences. As Philip J. Ivanhoe has written, ritual and music are not just an indicator of values in the sense that these examples show, but also an inculcator of them.

In this ritual psychology, the performance of ritual and music restricts desires because it alters the performer’s affective states, and place limits on appetitive desires. The Records of Ritual illustrates desirable affective states, describing how the Zhou founder King Wen 文 was moved to joy when making offerings to his deceased parents, but then to grief once the ritual ended (“ Jiyi ” 祭義). A collection associated with the third century BCE philosopher Xunzi 荀子 contains a Confucius quotation that associates different parts of a ruler’s day with particular emotions. Entering the ancestral temple to make offerings and maintain a connection to those who are no longer living leads the ruler to reflect on sorrow, while wearing a cap to hear legal cases leads him to reflect on worry (“ Aigong ” 哀公). These are examples of the way that ritual fosters the development of particular emotional responses, part of a sophisticated understanding of affective states and the ways that performance channels them in particular directions. More generally, the social conventions implicit in ritual hierarchies restrict people’s latitude to pursue their desires, as the master explains in the Records of Ritual:

The way of the gentleman may be compared to an embankment dam, bolstering those areas where ordinary people are deficient (“ Fangji ”).

Blocking the overflow of desires by adhering to these social norms preserves psychological space to reflect and reform one’s reactions.

Descriptions of the early community depict Confucius creating a subculture in which ritual provided an alternate source of value, effectively training his disciples to opt out of conventional modes of exchange. In the Analects , when Confucius says he would instruct any person who presented him with “a bundle of dried meat” (7.7), he is highlighting how his standards of value derive from the sacrificial system, eschewing currency or luxury items. Gifts valuable in ordinary situations might be worth little by such standards: “Even if a friend gave him a gift of a carriage and horses, if it was not dried meat, he did not bow” (10.15). The Han period biographical materials in Records of the Historian describe how a high official of the state of Lu did not come to court for three days after the state of Qi made him a gift of female entertainers. When, additionally, the high official failed to properly offer gifts of sacrificial meats, Confucius departed Lu for the state of Wei (47, cf. Analects 18.4). Confucius repeatedly rejected conventional values of wealth and position, choosing instead to rely on ritual standards of value. In some ways, these stories are similar to ones in the late Warring States and Han period compilation Master Zhuang ( Zhuangzi 莊子) that explore the way that things that are conventionally belittled for their lack of utility are useful by an unconventional standard. However, here the standard that gives such objects currency is ritual importance rather than longevity, divorcing Confucius from conventional materialistic or hedonistic pursuits. This is a second way that ritual allows one to direct more effort into character formation.

Once, when speaking of cultivating benevolence, Confucius explained how ritual value was connected to the ideal way of the gentleman, which should always take precedence over the pursuit of conventional values:

Wealth and high social status are what others covet. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not dwell in them. Poverty and low social status are what others shun. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not avoid them. (4.5)

The argument that ritual performance has internal benefits underlies the ritual psychology laid out by Confucius, one that explains how performing ritual and music controls desires and sets the stage for further moral development.

Many of the short passages from the Analects , and the “Thicket of Sayings” passages excavated at Guodian, describe the development of set of ideal behaviors associated with the moral ideal of the “way” ( dao 道) of the “gentleman” ( junzi 君子). Based on the analogy between the way of Confucius and character ethics systems deriving from Aristotle, these patterns of behavior are today often described using the Latinate term “virtue”. In the second passage in the Analects , the disciple You Ruo 有若 says a person who behaves with filial piety to parents and siblings ( xiao and di 弟), and who avoids going against superiors, will rarely disorder society. It relates this correlation to a more general picture of how patterns of good behavior effectively open up the possibility of following the way of the gentleman: “The gentleman works at the roots. Once the roots are established, the way comes to life” (1.2). The way of the gentleman is a distillation of the exemplary behaviors of the selfless culture heroes of the past, and is available to all who are willing to “work at the roots”. In this way, the virtues that Confucius taught were not original to him, but represented his adaptations of existing cultural ideals, to which he continually returned in order to clarify their proper expressions in different situations. Five behaviors of the gentleman most central to the Analects are benevolence ( ren 仁), righteousness ( yi 義), ritual propriety ( li 禮), wisdom ( zhi 智), and trustworthiness ( xin 信).

The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by a sense of what is good from their perspectives. Sometimes the Analects defines benevolence generally as “caring for others” (12.22), but in certain contexts it is associated with more specific behaviors. Examples of contextual definitions of benevolence include treating people on the street as important guests and common people as if they were attendants at a sacrifice (12.2), being reticent in speaking (12.3) and rejecting the use of clever speech (1.3), and being respectful where one dwells, reverent where one works, and loyal where one deals with others (13.19). It is the broadest of the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die than compromise it (15.9). Benevolence entails a kind of unselfishness, or, as David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, it involves forming moral judgments from a combined perspective of self and others.

Later writers developed accounts of the sources of benevolent behavior, most famously in the context of the discussion of human nature ( xing 性) in the centuries after Confucius. Mencius (fourth century BCE) argued that benevolence grows out of the cultivation of an affective disposition to compassion ( ceyin 惻隱) in the face of another’s distress. The anonymous author of the late Warring States period excavated text “Five Kinds of Action” ( Wu xing 五行) describes it as building from the affection one feels for close family members, through successive stages to finally develop into a more universal, fully-fledged virtue. In the Analects , however, one comment on human nature emphasizes the importance of nurture: “By nature people are close, by habituation they are miles apart” (17.2), a sentiment that suggests the importance of training one’s dispositions through ritual and the classics in a manner closer to the program of Xunzi (third century BCE). The Analects , however, discusses the incubation of benevolent behavior in family and ritual contexts. You Ruo winds up his discussion of the roots of the way of the gentleman with the rhetorical question: “Is not behaving with filial piety to one’s parents and siblings the root of benevolence?” (1.2). Confucius tells his disciple Yan Yuan 顏淵 that benevolence is a matter of “overcoming oneself and returning to ritual propriety” (12.1). These connections between benevolence and other virtues underscore the way in which benevolent behavior does not entail creating novel social forms or relationships, but is grounded in traditional familial and ritual networks.

The second virtue, righteousness, is often described in the Analects relative to situations involving public responsibility. In contexts where standards of fairness and integrity are valuable, such as acting as the steward of an estate as some of the disciples of Confucius did, righteousness is what keeps a person uncorrupted. Confucius wrote that a gentleman “thinks of righteousness when faced with gain” (16.10, 19.10), or “when faced with profit” (14.12). Confucius says that one should ignore the wealth and rank one might attain by acting against righteousness, even if it means eating coarse rice, drinking water, and sleeping using one’s bent arm as a pillow (7.16). Later writers like Xunzi celebrated Confucius for his righteousness in office, which he stressed was all the more impressive because Confucius was extremely poor (“ Wangba ” 王霸). This behavior is particularly relevant in official interactions with ordinary people, such as when “employing common people” (5.16), and if a social superior has mastered it, “the common people will all comply” (13.4). Like benevolence, righteousness also entails unselfishness, but instead of coming out of consideration for the needs of others, it is rooted in steadfastness in the face of temptation.

The perspective needed to act in a righteous way is sometimes related to an attitude to personal profit that recalls the previous section’s discussion of how Confucius taught his disciples to recalibrate their sense of value based on their immersion in the sacrificial system. More specifically, evaluating things based on their ritual significance can put one at odds with conventional hierarchies of value. This is defined as the root of righteous behavior in a story from the late Warring States period text Master Fei of Han ( Han Feizi 韓非子). The tale relates how at court, Confucius was given a plate with a peach and a pile of millet grains with which to scrub the fruit clean. After the attendants laughed at Confucius for proceeding to eat the millet first, Confucius explained to them that in sacrifices to the Former Kings, millet itself is the most valued offering. Therefore, cleaning a ritually base peach with millet:

would be obstructing righteousness, and so I dared not put [the peach] above what fills the vessels in the ancestral shrine. (“ Waichu shuo, zuo shang ” 外儲說左上)

While such stories may have been told to mock his fastidiousness, for Confucius the essence of righteousness was internalizing a system of value that he would breach for neither convenience nor profit.

At times, the phrase “benevolence and righteousness” is used metonymically for all the virtues, but in some later texts, a benevolent impulse to compassion and a righteous steadfastness are seen as potentially contradictory. In the Analects , portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolence and righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described as salient in a different set of contexts. In ritual contexts like courts or shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familial affection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key to benevolence. In the performance of official duties, one ideally acts out of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with a resistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness. The Records of Ritual distinguishes between the domains of these two virtues:

In regulating one’s household, kindness overrules righteousness. Outside of one’s house, righteousness cuts off kindness. What one undertakes in serving one’s father, one also does in serving one’s lord, because one’s reverence for both is the same. Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorable way, is the height of righteousness. (“ Sangfu sizhi ” 喪服四制)

While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by other means, this passage underlines how in different contexts, different virtues may push people toward participation in particular shared cultural practices constitutive of the good life.

While the virtues of benevolence and righteousness might impel a gentleman to adhere to ritual norms in particular situations or areas of life, a third virtue of “ritual propriety” expresses a sensitivity to one’s social place, and willingness to play all of one’s multiple ritual roles. The term li translated here as “ritual propriety” has a particularly wide range of connotations, and additionally connotes both the conventions of ritual and etiquette. In the Analects, Confucius is depicted both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed they were conducted in antiquity. Detailed restrictions such as “the gentleman avoids wearing garments with red-black trim” (10.6), which the poet Ezra Pound disparaged as “verses re: length of the night-gown and the predilection for ginger” (Pound 1951: 191), were by no means trivial to Confucius. His imperative, “Do not look or listen, speak or move, unless it is in accordance with the rites” (12.1), in answer to a question about benevolence, illustrates how the symbolic conventions of the ritual system played a role in the cultivation of the virtues. We have seen how ritual shapes values by restricting desires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moral dispositions. Yet without the proper affective state, a person is not properly performing ritual. In the Analects , Confucius says he cannot tolerate “ritual without reverence, or mourning without grief,” (3.26). When asked about the root of ritual propriety, he says that in funerals, the mourners’ distress is more important than the formalities (3.4). Knowing the details of ritual protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincere affect in performing them. Together, they are necessary conditions for the gentleman’s training, and are also essential to understanding the social context in which Confucius taught his disciples.

The mastery that “ritual propriety” signaled was part of a curriculum associated with the training of rulers and officials, and proper ritual performance at court could also serve as a kind of political legitimation. Confucius summarized the different prongs of the education in ritual and music involved in the training of his followers:

Raise yourself up with the Classic of Odes . Establish yourself with ritual. Complete yourself with music. (8.8)

On one occasion, Boyu 伯魚, the son of Confucius, explained that when he asked his father to teach him, his father told him to study the Classic of Odes in order to have a means to speak with others, and to study ritual to establish himself (16.13). That Confucius insists that his son master classical literature and practices underscores the values of these cultural products as a means of transmitting the way from one generation to the next. He tells his disciples that the study of the Classic of Odes prepares them for different aspects of life, providing them with a capacity to:

at home serve one’s father, away from it serve one’s lord, as well as increase one’s knowledge of the names of birds, animals, plants and trees. (17.9)

This valuation of knowledge of both the cultural and natural worlds is one reason why the figure of Confucius has traditionally been identified with schooling, and why today his birthday is celebrated as “Teacher’s Day” in some parts of Asia. In the ancient world, this kind of education also qualified Confucius and his disciples for employment on estates and at courts.

The fourth virtue, wisdom, is related to appraising people and situations. In the Analects, wisdom allows a gentleman to discern crooked and straight behavior in others (12.22), and discriminate between those who may be reformed and those who may not (15.8). In the former dialogue, Confucius explains the virtue of wisdom as “knowing others”. The “Thicket of Sayings” excavated at Guodian indicates that this knowledge is the basis for properly “selecting” others, defining wisdom as the virtue that is the basis for selection. But it is also about appraising situations correctly, as suggested by the master’s rhetorical question: “How can a person be considered wise if that person does not dwell in benevolence?” (4.1). One well-known passage often cited to imply Confucius is agnostic about the world of the spirits is more literally about how wisdom allows an outsider to present himself in a way appropriate to the people on whose behalf he is working:

When working for what is right for the common people, to show reverence for the ghosts and spirits while maintaining one’s distance may be deemed wisdom. (6.22)

The context for this sort of appraisal is usually official service, and wisdom is often attributed to valued ministers or advisors to sage rulers.

In certain dialogues, wisdom also connotes a moral discernment that allows the gentleman to be confident of the appropriateness of good actions. In the Analects , Confucius tells his disciple Zi Lu 子路 that wisdom recognizes knowing a thing as knowing it, and ignorance of a thing as ignorance of it (2.17). In soliloquies about several virtues, Confucius describes a wise person as never confused (9.28, 14.28). While comparative philosophers have noted that Chinese thought has nothing clearly analogous to the role of the will in pre-modern European philosophy, the moral discernment that is part of wisdom does provide actors with confidence that the moral actions they have taken are correct.

The virtue of trustworthiness qualifies a gentleman to give advice to a ruler, and a ruler or official to manage others. In the Analects , Confucius explains it succinctly: “if one is trustworthy, others will give one responsibilities” (17.6, cf. 20.1). While trustworthiness may be rooted in the proper expression of friendship between those of the same status (1.4, 5.26), it is also valuable in interactions with those of different status. The disciple Zi Xia 子夏 explains its effect on superiors and subordinates: when advising a ruler, without trustworthiness, the ruler will think a gentleman is engaged in slander, and when administering a state, without trustworthiness, people will think a gentleman is exploiting them (19.10). The implication is that a sincerely public-minded official would be ineffective without the trust that this quality inspires. In a dialogue with a ruler from chapter four of Han’s Intertextual Commentary the Odes , Confucius explains that in employing someone, trustworthiness is superior to strength, ability to flatter, or eloquence. Being able to rely on someone is so important to Confucius that, when asked about good government, he explained that trustworthiness was superior to either food or weapons, concluding: “If the people do not find the ruler trustworthy, the state will not stand” (12.7).

By the Han period, benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness began to be considered as a complete set of human virtues, corresponding with other quintets of phenomena used to describe the natural world. Some texts described a level of moral perfection, as with the sages of antiquity, as unifying all these virtues. Prior to this, it is unclear whether the possession of a particular virtue entailed having all the others, although benevolence was sometimes used as a more general term for a combination of one or more of the other virtues (e.g., Analects 17.6). At other times, Confucius presented individual virtues as expressions of goodness in particular domains of life. Early Confucius dialogues are embedded in concrete situations, and so resist attempts to distill them into more abstract principles of morality. As a result, descriptions of the virtues are embedded in anecdotes about the exemplary individuals whose character traits the dialogues encourage their audience to develop. Confucius taught that the measure of a good action was whether it was an expression of the actor’s virtue, something his lessons share with those of philosophies like Aristotle’s that are generally described as “virtue ethics”. A modern evaluation of the teachings of Confucius as a “virtue ethics” is articulated in Bryan W. Van Norden’s Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy , which pays particular attention to analogies between the way of Confucius and Aristotle’s “good life”. The nature of the available source materials about Confucius, however, means that the diverse texts from early China lack the systematization of a work like Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics .

The five virtues described above are not the only ones of which Confucius spoke. He discussed loyalty ( zhong 忠), which at one point is described as the minister’s behavior toward a ritually proper ruler (3.19). He said that courage ( yong 勇) is what compels one to act once one has seen where righteousness lies (2.24). Another term sometimes translated as “virtue” ( de 德), is usually used to describe the authority of a ruler that grows out of goodness or favor to others, and is a key term in many of the social and political works discussed in the following section. Yet going through a list of all the virtues in the early sources is not sufficient to describe the entirety of the moral universe associated with Confucius.

The presence of themes in the Analects like the ruler’s exceptional influence as a moral exemplar, the importance of judging people by their deeds rather than their words (1.3, 2.10, 5.10), or even the protection of the culture of Zhou by higher powers (9.5), all highlight the unsystematic nature of the text and underscore that teaching others how to cultivate the virtues is a key aspect, but only a part, of the ethical ideal of Confucius. Yet there is also a conundrum inherent in any attempt to derive abstract moral rules from the mostly dialogical form of the Analects , that is, the problem of whether the situational context and conversation partner is integral to evaluating the statements of Confucius. A historically notable example of an attempt to find a generalized moral rule in the Analects is the reading of a pair of passages that use a formulation similar to that of the “Golden Rule” of the Christian Bible (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31) to describe benevolence: “Do not impose upon others those things that you yourself do not desire” (12.2, cf. 5.12, 15.24). Read as axiomatic moral imperatives, these passages differ from the kind of exemplar-based and situational conversations about morality usually found in the Analects . For this reason, some scholars, including E. Bruce Brooks, believe these passages to be interpolations. While they are not wholly inconsistent with the way that benevolence is described in early texts, their interpretation as abstract principles has been influenced by their perceived similarity to the Biblical examples. In the Records of Ritual , a slightly different formulation of a rule about self and others is presented as not universal in its scope, but rather as descriptive of how the exemplary ruler influences the people. In common with other early texts, the Analects describes how the moral transformation of society relies on the positive example of the ruler, comparing the influence of the gentleman on the people to the way the wind blows on the grass, forcing it to bend (12.19). In a similar vein, after discussing how the personal qualities of rulers of the past determined whether or not their subjects could morally transform, the Records of Ritual expresses its principle of reflexivity:

That is why the gentleman only seeks things in others that he or she personally possesses. [The gentleman] only condemns things in others that he or she personally lacks. (“ Daxue ” 大學)

This is a point about the efficacy of moral suasion, saying that a ruler cannot expect to reform society solely by command since it is only the ruler’s personal example that can transform others. For this reason, the ruler should not compel behaviors from his subjects to which he or she would not personally assent, something rather different from the “Golden Rule”. Historically, however, views that Confucius was inspired by the same Natural Theology as Christians, or that philosophers are naturally concerned with the generalization of moral imperatives, have argued in favor of a closer identification with the “Golden Rule,” a fact that illustrates the interpretative conundrum arising from the formal aspects of the Analects .

Early Zhou political philosophy as represented in the Classic of Odes and the Classic of Documents centered on moral justification for political authority based on the doctrine of the “Mandate of Heaven” ( tianming 天命). This view was that the sage’s virtue ( de ) attracted the attention of the anthropomorphized cosmic power usually translated as “Heaven” ( tian 天), which supported the sage’s rise to political authority. These canonical texts argued that political success or failure is a function of moral quality, evidenced by actions such as proper ritual performance, on the part of the ruler. Confucius drew on these classics and adapted the classical view of moral authority in important ways, connecting it to a normative picture of society. Positing a parallel between the nature of reciprocal responsibilities of individuals in different roles in two domains of social organization, in the Analects Confucius linked filial piety in the family to loyalty in the political realm:

It is rare for a person who is filially pious to his parents and older siblings to be inclined to rebel against his superiors… Filial piety to parents and elder siblings may be considered the root of a person. (1.2)

This section examines Confucius’s social and political philosophy, beginning with the central role of his analysis of the traditional norm of filial piety.

Just as Confucius analyzed the psychology of ritual performance and related it to individual moral development, his discussion of filial piety was another example of the development and adaptation of a particular classical cultural pattern to a wider philosophical context and set of concerns. Originally limited to descriptions of sacrifice to ancestors in the context of hereditary kinship groups, a more extended meaning of “filial piety” was used to describe the sage king Shun’s 舜 (trad. r. 2256–2205 BCE) treatment of his living father in the Classic of Documents . Despite humble origins, Shun’s filial piety was recognized as a quality that signaled he would be a suitable successor for the sage king Yao 堯 (trad. r. 2357–2256 BCE). Confucius in the Analects praised the ancient sage kings at great length, and the sage king Yu 禹 for his filial piety in the context of sacrifice (8.21). However, he used the term filial piety to mean both sacrificial mastery and behaving appropriately to one’s parents. In a conversation with one of his disciples he explains that filial piety meant “not contesting”, and that it entailed:

while one’s parents were alive, serving them in a ritually proper way, and after one’s parents died, burying them and sacrificing to them in a ritually proper way. (2.5)

In rationalizing the moral content of legacies of the past like the three-year mourning period after the death of a parent, Confucius reasoned that for three years a filially pious child should not alter a parent’s way (4.20, cf. 19.18), and explains the origin of length of the three-year mourning period to be the length of time that the parents had given their infant child support (17.21). This adaptation of filial piety to connote the proper way for a gentleman to behave both inside and outside the home was a generalization of a pattern of behavior that had once been specific to the family.

Intellectual historian Chen Lai 陈来 has identified two sets of ideal traits that became hybridized in the late Warring States period. The first set of qualities describes the virtue of the ruler coming out of politically-oriented descriptions of figures like King Wen of Zhou, including uprightness ( zhi 直) and fortitude ( gang 剛). The second set of qualities is based on bonds specific to kinship groups, including filial piety and kindness ( ci 慈). As kinship groups were subordinated to larger political units, texts began to exhibit hybrid lists of ideal qualities that drew from both sets. Consequently, Confucius had to effectively integrate clan priorities and state priorities, a conciliation illustrated in Han’s Intertextual Commentary the Odes by his insistence that filial piety is not simply deference to elders. When his disciple Zengzi 曾子 submitted to a severe beating from his father’s staff in punishment for an offense, Confucius chastises Zengzi, saying that even the sage king Shun would not have submitted to a beating so severe. He goes on to explain that a child has a dual set of duties, to both a father and ruler, the former filial piety and the other loyalty. Therefore, protecting one’s body is a duty to the ruler and a counterweight to a duty to submit to one’s parent (8). In the Classic of Filial Piety ( Xiaojing 孝經), similar reasoning is applied to a redefinition of filial piety that rejects behaviors like such extreme submission because protecting one’s body is a duty to one’s parents. This sort of qualification suggests that as filial piety moved further outside its original family context, it had to be qualified to be integrated into a view that valorized multiple character traits.

Since filial piety was based on a fundamental relationship defined within the family, one’s family role and state role could conflict. A Classic of Documents text spells out the possible conflict between loyalty to a ruler and filial piety toward a father (“ Cai Zhong zhi ming ” 蔡仲之命), a trade-off similar to a story in the Analects about a man named Zhi Gong 直躬 (Upright Gong) who testified that his father stole a sheep. Although Confucius acknowledged that theft injures social order, he judged Upright Gong to have failed to be truly “upright” in a sense that balances the imperative to testify with special consideration for members of his kinship group:

In my circle, being upright differs from this. A father would conceal such a thing on behalf of his son, and a son would conceal it on behalf of his father. Uprightness is found in this. (13.18)

In this way, too, Confucius was adapting filial piety to a wider manifold of moral behaviors, honing his answer to the question of how a child balances responsibility to family and loyalty to the state. While these two traits may conflict with one and other, Sociologist Robert Bellah, in his study of Tokugawa and modern Japan, noted how the structural similarity between loyalty and filial piety led to their both being promoted by the state as interlinked ideals that located each person in dual networks of responsibility. Confucius was making this claim when he connected filial piety to the propensity to be loyal to superiors (1.2). Statements like “filial piety is the root of virtuous action” from the Classic of Filial Piety connect loyalty and the kind of action that signals the personal virtue that justifies political authority, as in the historical precedent of the sage king Shun.

Of the classical sources from which Confucius drew, two were particularly influential in discussions of political legitimation. The Classic of Odes consists of 305 Zhou period regulated lyrics (hence the several translations “songs”, “odes”, or “poems”) and became numbered as one of the Five Classics ( Wujing ) in the Han dynasty. Critical to a number of these lyrics is the celebration of King Wen of Zhou’s overthrow of the Shang, which is an example of a virtuous person seizing the “Mandate of Heaven”:

This King Wen of ours, his prudent heart was well-ordered. He shone in serving the High God, and thus enjoyed much good fortune. Unswerving in his virtue, he came to hold the domains all around. (“ Daming ” 大明)

The Zhou political theory expressed in this passage is based on the idea of a limited moral universe that may not reward a virtuous person in isolation, but in which the High God ( Shangdi 上帝, Di 帝) or Heaven will intercede to replace a bad ruler with a person of exceptional virtue. The Classic of Documents is a collection that includes orations attributed to the sage rulers of the past and their ministers, and its arguments often concern moral authority with a focus on the methods and character of exemplary rulers of the past. The chapter “Announcement of Kang” (“ Kanggao ” 康誥) is addressed to one of the sons of King Wen, and provides him with a guide for behaving as sage ruler as well as with methods that had been empirically proven successful by those rulers. When it comes to the mandate inherited from King Wen, the chapter insists that the mandate is not unchanging, and so as ruler the son must always be mindful of it when deciding how to act. Further, it is not always possible to understand Heaven, but the “feelings of the people are visible”, and so the ruler must care for his subjects. The Zhou political view that Confucius inherited was based on supernatural intercession to place a person with personal virtue in charge of the state, but over time the emphasis shifted to the way that the effects of good government could be viewed as proof of a continuing moral justification for that placement.

Confucius himself arguably served as a historical counterexample to the classical “Mandate of Heaven” theory, calling into question the direct nature of the support given by Heaven to the person with virtue. The Han period Records of the Historian biography of Confucius described him as possessing all the personal qualities needed to govern well, but wandering from state to state because those qualities had not been recognized. When his favorite disciple died, the Analects records Confucius saying that “Heaven has forsaken me!” (11.9). Wang Chong’s 王充 (27–c.97 CE) Balanced Discussions ( Lunheng 論衡) uses the phrase “uncrowned king” ( suwang 素王) to describe the tragic situation: “Confucius did not rule as king, but his work as uncrowned king may be seen in the Spring and Autumn Annals ” (80). The view that through his writings Confucius could prepare the world for the government of a future sage king became a central part of Confucius lore that has colored the reception of his writings since, especially in works related to the Spring and Autumn Annals and its Gongyang Commentary . The biography of Confucius reinforced the tragic cosmological picture that personal virtue did not always guarantee success. Even when Heaven’s support is cited in the Analects , it is not a matter of direct intercession, but expressed through personal virtue or cultural patterns: “Heaven gave birth to the virtue in me, so what can Huan Tui 桓魋 do to me?” (7.23, cf. 9.5). As Robert Eno has pointed out, the concept of Heaven also came to be increasingly naturalized in passages like “what need does Heaven have to speak?” (17.19). Changing views of the scope of Heaven’s activity and the ways human beings may have knowledge of that activity fostered a change in the role of Heaven in political theory.

Most often, in dialogues with the rulers of his time, references to Heaven were occasions for Confucius to encourage rulers to remain attentive to their personal moral development and treat their subjects fairly. In integrating the classical legacy of the “Mandate of Heaven” that applied specifically to the ruler or “Son of Heaven” ( tianzi 天子), with moral teachings that were directed to a wider audience, the nature of Heaven’s intercession came to be understood differently. In the Analects and writings like those attributed to Mencius, descriptions of virtue were often adapted to contexts such as the conduct of lesser officials and the navigation of everyday life. Kwong-Loi Shun notes that in such contexts, the influence of Heaven remained as an explanation of both what happened outside of human control, like political success or lifespan, and of the source of the ethical ideal. In the Analects , the gentleman’s awe of Heaven is combined with an awe of the words of the sages (16.8), and when Confucius explains the Zhou theory of the “mandate of Heaven” in the Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual, he does so in order to explain how the signs of a well-ordered society demonstrate that the ruler’s “virtue matches Heaven” (“ Shaojian ” 少閒). Heaven is still ubiquitous in the responses of Confucius to questions from rulers, but the focus of the responses was not on Heaven’s direct intercession but rather the ruler’s demonstration of his personal moral qualities.

In this way, personal qualities of modesty, filial piety or respect for the elders were seen as proof of fitness to serve in an official capacity. Qualification to rule was demonstrated by proper behavior in the social roles defined by the “five relationships” ( wulun 五倫), a formulation seen in the writings of Mencius that became a key feature of the interpretation of works associated with Confucius in the Han dynasty. The Western Han emperors were members of the Liu clan, and works like the Guliang Commentary ( Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳) to the Spring and Autumn Annals emphasized normative family behavior grounded in the five relationships, which were (here, adapted to include mothers and sisters): ruler and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, siblings, and friends. Writing with particular reference to the Classic of Filial Piety , Henry Rosemont and Roger Ames argue that prescribed social roles are a defining characteristic of the “Confucian tradition”, and that such roles were normative guides to appropriate conduct. They contrast this with the “virtue ethics” approach they say requires rational calculation to determine moral conduct, while filial piety is simply a matter of meeting one’s family obligations. Just as the five virtues were placed at the center of later theories of moral development, once social roles became systematized in this way, selected situational teachings of Confucius consistent with them could become the basis of more abstract, systematic moral theories. Yet this could not have happened without the adaptation of the abstract classical political theory of “Heaven’s mandate”, a doctrine that originally supported the ruling clan, to argue that Heaven’s influence was expressed through particular concrete expressions of individual virtue. As a result of this adaptation in writings associated with Confucius, the ruler’s conduct of imperial rituals, performance of filial piety, or other demonstrations of personal virtue provided proof of moral fitness that legitimated his political authority. As with the rituals and the virtues, filial piety and the mandate of Heaven were transformed as they were integrated with the classics through the voices of Confucius and the rulers and disciples of his era.

Earlier, the usage of “Confucius” as a metonym for Chinese traditional culture was introduced as a feature of the modern period. Yet the complexity of the philosophical views associated with Confucius—encompassing ethical ideals developed out of a sophisticated view of the effects of ritual and music on the performer’s psychology, robust descriptions of the attitudes of traditional exemplars across diverse life contexts, and the abstraction of normative behaviors in the family and state—is due in part to the fact that this metonymic usage was to some degree already the case in the Han period. By that time, the teachings of Confucius had gone through several centuries of gestation, and dialogues and quotations fashioned at different points over that time circulated and mixed. Put slightly differently, Confucius read the traditional culture of the halcyon Zhou period in a particular way, but this reading was continuously reflected and refracted through different lenses during the Pre-Imperial period, prior to the results being fixed in diverse early Imperial period sources like the Analects , the Records of Ritual , and the Records of the Historian. What remains is the work of the hand of Confucius, but also of his “school”, and even sometimes of his opponents during the centuries that his philosophy underwent elaboration and drift. This process of accretion and elaboration is not uncommon for pre-modern writings, and the resulting breadth and depth explains, at least in part, why the voice of Confucius retained primacy in pre-modern Chinese philosophical conversations as well as in many modern debates about the role of traditional East Asian culture.

• Chen Lai (陈来), 2017, Gudai zongjiao yu lunli (古代宗教与伦理) [Ancient religion and ethics], Beijing: Shenghuo dushu xinzhi.
• Clerc, Nicolas-Gabriel, 1769, Yu Le Grand et Confucius: Histoire Chinoise , Soissons: Ponce Courtois.
• Confucius, [1998], The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and his Successors , E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks (trans/eds), (Translations from the Asian Classics), New York: Columbia University Press.
• Cook, Scott Bradley, 2013, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation , 2 volumes, (Cornell East Asia Series 164 & 165), Ithaca, NY: East Asian Program, Cornell University.
• Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, 2004, Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China , Leiden: Brill.
• Eno, Robert, 1989, The Confucian Creation of Heaven : Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames, 1987, Thinking through Confucius , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Hu Shi (胡適), 1919 [1989], Zhongguo Zhexue Shi Dagang (中國哲學史大綱) [A General Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy]. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian.
• Huang, Béatrice Ching-Ya, 2024, Confucius latinus. Contribution à l’étude des traductions latines des Entretiens de Confucius par les Jésuites (XVIIe-XIXe siècle) (Littératures étrangères – série Route de la soie), Paris: Honoré Champion.
• Hunter, Michael J., 2017, Confucius beyond the Analects , (Studies in the History of Chinese Texts 7), Leiden: Brill.
• Ivanhoe, Philip J., 2013, Confucian Reflections: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times , New York: Routledge.
• Makeham, John, 2003, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the “Analects” , Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian Center.
• Mungello, D. E., 2013, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 , fourth edition, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2013.
• Olberding, Amy and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds), 2011, Mortality in Traditional China , (SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
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• Pound, Ezra, 1951, Confucius , New York: New Directions.
• Rosemont, Henry Jr. and Roger T. Ames, 2016, Confucian Role Ethics: A Moral Vision for the 21st Century? Göttingen: V & R Unipress and Taipei: National Taiwan University Press.
• Shun, Kwong-Loi, 1997, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought , Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Sima Qian (司馬遷), [1998], Shiji (史記) [Records of the Historian], Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.
• Van Norden, Bryan, 2007, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511497995
• Yan Buke (閻步克), 2001, Yueshi yu shiguan: Chuantong zhengzhi wenhua yu zhengzhi zhidu lunji (乐师与史官 : 传统政治文化与政治制度论集) [Music Director and Official Scribe: Essays on traditional political culture and administrative regulations]. Beijing: Shenghuo dushu xinzhi sanlian shudian.
• Yang Bojun (杨伯峻), 1958 [2005], Lunyu yizhu (论语译注) [An Interpretive Commentary to the Analects ], Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju.
• Zhu Weizheng (朱维錚), 1986, “Lunyu jieji cuoshuo” (論語結集脞說) [Jottings on the Compilation of the Analects], Kongzi yanjiu , 1986(1): 40–52.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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Confucianism

The Research Institution of Confucianism in China. (kanegen/flickr)

Confucianism is often characterized as a system of social and ethical philosophy rather than a religion. In fact, Confucianism built on an ancient religious foundation to establish the social values, institutions, and transcendent ideals of traditional Chinese society. It was what sociologist Robert Bellah called a "civil religion," (1) the sense of religious identity and common moral understanding at the foundation of a society's central institutions. It is also what a Chinese sociologist called a "diffused religion"; (3) its institutions were not a separate church, but those of society, family, school, and state; its priests were not separate liturgical specialists, but parents, teachers, and officials. Confucianism was part of the Chinese social fabric and way of life; to Confucians, everyday life was the arena of religion.

The founder of Confucianism, Master Kong (Confucius, 551-479 B.C.E.) did not intend to found a new religion, but to interpret and revive the unnamed religion of the Zhou dynasty, under which many people thought the ancient system of religious rule was bankrupt; why couldn't the gods prevent the social upheavals? The burning issue of the day was: If it is not the ancestral and nature spirits, what then is the basis of a stable, unified, and enduring social order? The dominant view of the day, espoused by Realists and Legalists, was that strict law and statecraft were the bases of sound policy. Confucius, however, believed that the basis lay in Zhou religion, in its rituals (li). He interpreted these not as sacrifices asking for the blessings of the gods, but as ceremonies performed by human agents and embodying the civilized and cultured patterns of behavior developed through generations of human wisdom. They embodied, for him, the ethical core of Chinese society. Moreover, Confucius applied the term "ritual" to actions beyond the formal sacrifices and religious ceremonies to include social rituals: courtesies and accepted standards of behavior-- what we today call social mores. He saw these time-honored and traditional rituals as the basis of human civilization, and he felt that only a civilized society could have a stable, unified, and enduring social order.

Thus one side of Confucianism was the affirmation of accepted values and norms of behavior in primary social institutions and basic human relationships. All human relationships involved a set of defined roles and mutual obligations; each participant should understand and conformto his/her proper role. Starting from individual and family, people acting rightly could reform and perfect the society. The blueprint of this process was described in "The Great Learning," a section of the Classic of Rituals:

Only when things are investigated is knowledge extended; only when knowledge is extended are thoughts sincere; only when thoughts are sincere are minds rectified; only when minds are rectified are the characters of persons cultivated; only when character is cultivated are our families regulated; only when families are regulated are states well governed; only when states are well governed is there peace in the world.(3)

Confucius' ethical vision ran against the grain of the legalistic mind set of his day. Only under the Han Emperor Wu (r. 140-87 B.C.E.) did Confucianism become accepted as state ideology and orthodoxy. From that time on the imperial state promoted Confucian values to maintain law, order, and the status quo. In late traditional China, emperors sought to establish village lectures on Confucian moral precepts and to give civic awards to filial sons and chaste wives. The imperial family and other notables sponsored the publication of morality books that encouraged the practice of Confucian values: respect for parents,loyalty to government, and keeping to one's place in society—farmers should remain farmers, and practice the ethics of farming. This side of Confucianism was conservative, and served to bolster established institutions and long-standing social divisions.

There was, however, another side to Confucianism. Confucius not only stressed social rituals (li), but also humaneness (ren). Ren, sometimes translated love or kindness, is not any one virtue, but the source of all virtues. The Chinese character literally represents the relationship between "two persons," or co-humanity—the potential to live together humanely rather than scrapping like birds or beasts. Ren keeps ritual forms from becoming hollow; a ritual performed with ren has not only form, but ethical content; it nurtures the inner character of the person, furthers his/her ethical maturation. Thus if the "outer"side of Confucianism was conformity and acceptance of social roles, the "inner" side was cultivation of conscience and character. Cultivation involved broad education and reflection on one's actions. It was a lifetime commitment to character building carving and polishing the stone of one's character until it was a lustrous gem. Master Kong described his own lifetime:

At fifteen, I set my heart on learning. At thirty, I was firmly established. At forty, I had no more doubts. At fifty, I knew the will of heaven. At sixty, I was ready to listen to it. At seventy, I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing what was right. Analects, 2:4

The inner pole of Confucianism was reformist, idealistic, and spiritual. It generated a high ideal for family interaction: members were to treat each other with love, respect, and consideration for the needs of all. It prescribed a lofty ideal for the state: the ruler was to be a father to his people and look after their basic needs. It required officials to criticize their rulers and refuse to serve the corrupt. This inner and idealist wing spawned a Confucian reformation known in the West as Neo-Confucianism. The movement produced reformers, philanthropists, dedicated teachers and officials, and social philosophers from the eleventh through the nineteenth centuries.

The idealist wing of Confucianism had a religious character. Its ideals were transcendent, not in the sense that they were other worldly (the Confucians were not interested in a far-off heavenly realm), but in the sense of the transcendent ideal—perfection. On the one hand, Confucian values are so closely linked with everyday life that they sometimes seem trivial. Everyday life is so familiar that we do not take its moral content seriously. We are each a friend to someone, or aparent, or certainly the child of a parent. On the other hand, Confucians remind us that the familiar ideals of friendship, parenthood, and filiality are far from trivial; in real life we only rarely attain these ideals. We all too often just go through the motions, too preoccupied to give our full attention to the relationship. If we consistently and wholeheartedly realized our potential to be the very best friend, parent, son, or daughter humanly possible, we would establish a level of caring, of moral excellence,that would approach the utopian. This is Confucian transcendence: to take the actions of everyday life seriously as the arena of moral and spiritual fulfillment.

The outer and inner aspects of Confucianism—its conforming and reforming sides—were in tension throughout Chinese history. Moreover, the tensions between social and political realities and the high-minded moral ideals of the Confucians were an ongoing source of concern for the leaders of this tradition. The dangers of moral sterility and hypocrisy were always present. Confucianism, they knew well, served both as a conservative state orthodoxy and a stimulus for reform. Great Confucians, like religious leaders everywhere, sought periodically to revive and renew the moral, intellectual, and spiritual vigor of the tradition. Until the 1890s, serious-minded Chinese saw Confucianism, despite its failures to realize its ideal society, as the source of hope for China and the core of what it meant to be Chinese.

Although since the revolution, the public ideology of the People's Republic has abandoned Confucian teachings, one can say that there is a continuity of form: like Confucianism before it, Maoism teaches a commitment to transforming the world by applying the lessons of autopian ideology to the actions and institutions of everyday life. This is not to claim that Mao was a "closet Confucian," but to emphasize that the Confucian way was virtually synonymous with the Chinese way.

Robert Neelly Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in a Time of Trial , New York: Seabury Press, 1975. C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961, pp. 20-21. Excerpted and adapted from de Bary, Sources, I: 115-16. For a somewhat fuller philosophical (but readable) discussion, see Herbert Fingarette, Confucius — The Secular as Sacred , New York: Harper and Row, 1972, chapter one.

Note: This article and the one on Dao/Taoism were written during the Indiana Religion Studies Project Institute for Teaching about Religion in the Secondary Social Studies Curriculum. The drafts were critiqued by the social studies teachers who attended with an eye to supplementing and correcting the information in textbooks and other materials used by teachers. The two articles should read as a pair; they complement each other in much the same way these two religions complemented each other throughout Chinese history.

Author: Judith A. Berling.

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Confucianism is a philosophy developed in 6th-century BCE China , which is considered by some a secular-humanist belief system, by some a religion , and by others a social code. The broad range of subjects touched on by Confucianism lends itself to all three of these interpretations depending on which aspects one focuses on.

The philosophy is based on the belief that human beings are essentially good, that they engage in immoral behavior through lack of a strong moral standard, and that adherence to an ethical code, and rituals which encourage it, enabled one to live a productive and tranquil life of peace which would translate to a strong, ethical, and prosperous state.

It was founded by Confucius (K'ung-fu-Tze, Kong Fuzi, “Master Kong”, l. 551-479 BCE), a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period (c. 772-476 BCE). Confucius is considered among the greatest philosophers of the Hundred Schools of Thought (also given as the Contention of the Hundred Schools of Thought) which references the time during the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period (c. 481-221 BCE) when various philosophical schools contended with each other for adherents. He is, without a doubt, the most influential philosopher in China's history whose views, precepts, and concepts have informed Chinese culture for over 2,000 years.

Confucius himself claimed to have written nothing and offered nothing new, insisting his views were taken from older works (known as the Five Classics) he was just popularizing through his school. The later Confucian philosopher and scholar Mencius (Mang-Tze, l. 372-289 BCE), however, attributed the Five Classics to Confucius, a view that continued to be held until the mid-20th century CE. These works, three others on Confucian thought, and one by Mencius make up The Four Books and Five Classics which have been the foundational texts of Chinese culture since the time of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE) when Confucianism was made the state philosophy. The Four Books and Five Classics are:

• The Book of Rites (also given as The Book of Great Learning)
• The Doctrine of the Mean
• The Analects of Confucius
• The Works of Mencius
• The I-Ching
• The Classics of Poetry
• The Classics of Rites
• The Classics of History
• The Spring and Autumn Annals

The Five Classics are attributed to writers of the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE) which was in a period of decline during Confucius' lifetime. It may be that he did edit or revise the Five Classics, as tradition has held, but, even if he did not, he certainly popularized their concepts. His Analects , Books of Rites , and Doctrine of the Mean were written by his students based on his lectures and class discussions.

The Warring States Period concluded with the victory of the state of Qin over the others and the establishment of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE) which adopted the philosophy of Legalism and banned all others. Confucian works were outlawed and burned along with those of any other non-Legalist philosophers. Copies of the banned works only survived because they were hidden by intellectuals at great personal risk. The Han Dynasty, which succeeded the Qin, encouraged greater freedom of speech, established The Four Books and Five Classics as required reading for administrative positions which led to a wider dissemination of Confucian thought which would seamlessly blend with Chinese culture after the Han declared it the state philosophy.

Historical Background & Career in Lu

Shortly after its founding, the Zhou Dynasty decentralized the Chinese government by sending lords, loyal to the king, to establish their own states throughout the vast territory. This policy worked well at first, but eventually, the states grew more powerful than the king, and the old loyalties were forgotten. By c. 771 BCE, the Zhou Dynasty was already weakened almost to the point of irrelevancy when barbarian invasions forced the government to move east for better defense. This was the end of the so-called Western Zhou period (1046-771 BCE) and the beginning of the Eastern Zhou period (771-256 BCE) which corresponds to the Spring and Autumn Period and early Warring States Period during which Confucius lived and taught.

Confucius was born in September 551 BCE in the village of Qufu, State of Lu (Shandong Province), the son of a military commander named Kong He who was of noble descent. Confucius' birth name was Kong Qui, but he would later be addressed as Master Kong (Kong Fuzi) which was Latinized by 16th-century CE Christian missionaries to Confucius. His father died when he was three years old and the resultant loss of income led to a life of poverty. He later attended school while working various jobs to support himself and his mother until she died when he was around 23 years old. By this time, he was already married and had at least one son and possibly two daughters.

He had been provided with basic education, as defined by the Zhou Dynasty, in the Six Arts – Rites, Music , Archery, Charioteering, Calligraphy, and Mathematics – but had taken it upon himself to improve on his knowledge in all of these through private study. Scholar Forrest E. Baird notes, “possessed of a deep love of learning by age fifteen, Confucius became one of the best-educated men of the day by his mid-twenties” (284). Married, and with a family to support, Confucius took the qualifying exam for government work as a teacher and, as Baird notes, pursued his goal of a meaningful life in a worthy profession:

His threefold professional goal crystalized early – to serve in government, to teach others, and to transmit to posterity the splendid culture of the Zhou Dynasty…He had a special fondness for poetry and music and was skilled in the performance of the latter. His reputation for excellent teaching was established by the age of thirty. As a teacher, Confucius rejected vocationalism while pioneering a liberal education that was strong in ethics, history, literature , and the fine arts. He admitted any student who could afford the token tuition – a bundle of dried meat. (284)

Confucius taught and also was involved in government at the local level, at one point serving as magistrate (or governor) of his town under the administration of the Duke of Lu. A political struggle among three of the leading families and the Duke of Lu's personal failings caused Confucius to lose interest in his work in Lu. He had attempted to teach the ruling class that they could live happier, more fulfilling lives by observing right conduct in accordance with a moral code which would result in effective and just government, but the upper class was not interested in following his advice. He resigned from his position and left the state of Lu to try making converts elsewhere.

This was a chaotic era in which the states fought each other for supremacy and many of the long-established aspects of government, including bureaucratic positions, lost cohesion. Administrators, advisers, scholars, and teachers who once held government posts, found themselves jobless and so established their own schools based on their personal philosophies. Some of these were actual schools in which students would enroll and attend classes while others were more “schools of thought” or movements but, collectively, their efforts to attract students to their system while discrediting others' would later become known as the time of the Hundred Schools of Thought.

Confucius & the Hundred Schools

The term Hundred Schools of Thought should be understood figuratively to mean “many”, not literally one hundred. Among the ones which were recorded by later historians, such as Sima Qian (l. 145-135-86 BCE), were:

• School of Names
• Yin - Yang School
• School of Minor Talks
• School of Diplomacy
• Agriculturalism
• Yangism (Hedonist School)
• School of the Military
• School of Medicine

At this time, then, Confucianism was only one of many establishing a philosophical belief system which, for the most part, they then tried to popularize. After Confucius left his position in Lu, he traveled through other states vying with proponents of the different schools for acceptance of his vision over theirs. Baird comments:

Confucius wandered through the neighboring states in the company of a small band of students, whom he continued to teach. He offered advice on government matters to local rulers and sometimes accepted temporary posts in their service. There were hardships to be endured – rejection, persecution, even attempted assassination. (284)

He had no more luck convincing the upper class of these other states of the value of his system than he had had in Lu and so returned home at the age of 68 and set up his own school. He based his curriculum on the Five Classics of the Zhou Dynasty and continued teaching until his death , of natural causes, five years later. His philosophy, at the time of his death, remained no more than one school of thought among many and was influenced, to greater or lesser degrees, by these others.

Taoism influenced Confucianism through its concept of the Tao, the creative and binding force of the universe; Legalism through its insistence on law and ritual as the means of maintaining order and controlling people's negative impulses; the School of Names through its focus on how closely the word for an object or concept corresponded to it (how well words represented the reality they referenced); the School of Medicine through its emphasis on the importance of diet in maintaining health and a clear mind. Confucius was influenced by all of these, and no doubt many others, but streamlined the thought, eliminating what he felt was non-essential or problematic, to develop a philosophical system which, if observed, could help people make better choices, lead more peaceful lives, and avoid the kind of suffering everyone at the time was enduring due to the wars between the states.

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His philosophical vision was very simple: human beings were innately good, 'good' being defined as understanding the difference between right and wrong, and inclined naturally to choose what is right. This claim could be proven by how people reacted to others in times of trouble. The best-known example of this concept (given by the later Confucian Mencius) is a person coming across a young boy who has fallen into a well. One's first impulse is to save the boy – either by direct action or by running to find someone to help – even though one does not know the boy or his parents and might be risking one's own safety in trying to help him.

In cases where one did neither of these things – in other words, where one chose wrong over right – it was due to ignorance of what was right owing to a lack of a moral code and standard of conduct. Someone who would allow the boy to drown in the well would most likely have done so out of an overly developed sense of self-interest. If such a person were educated in right action and a proper understanding of the world and their place in it, they would choose right over wrong.

This is where the theological aspect comes in which encourages some to interpret Confucianism as a religion. Confucius believed in the Chinese concept of Tian (Heaven) which should be understood in this case as something quite close to the Tao. Tian is the source of and sustainer of all life which created the ordered world out of chaos. One needed to recognize the existence of Tian , a constant flux of Yin and Yang (opposite) forces, in order to understand one's place in the world. Sacrifices made to the various gods made no difference to those gods, who were all aspects of Tian , but made a significant difference to the one offering the sacrifice because belief in a higher power, whatever form it took, helped to check one's concept of self-importance, reduced one's ego, and encouraged one to move from self-interest to consider the interests and welfare of others.

A belief in a higher power alone was not enough to encourage right action, however, nor to control one's baser instincts. Confucius advocated a strict code of ethics one should adhere to in order to maintain the middle way in life of peace and prosperity. These are known as the Five Constants and Four Virtues:

• Ren – benevolence
• Yi – righteousness
• Li – ritual
• Zhi – knowledge
• Xin – integrity
• Xiao – filial piety
• Zhong – loyalty
• Jie – contingency
• Yi – justice/righteousness

All of these were equally important, but they began with filial piety. People were encouraged to honor and respect their parents and observe a hierarchy of authority where a son obeyed his father's wishes, a younger brother respected and deferred to his older brother, and women did the same with men. In this way, the family would live harmoniously and, if enough families embraced filial piety, one would soon have a whole community of contented people, then a state, and then an entire country. There would be no need of oppressive governments or laws because people would, essentially, be governing themselves through recognition of the benefits of virtuous behavior. Confucius writes:

If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame and, moreover, will become good. ( Analects , 2.3; Tamblyn, p. 3)

By embracing filial piety, one was taking the initial step toward the other constants and virtues because one was subjecting one's self to a policy of behavior that did not elevate the self. Even the head of the household, the father, was expected to be humble, in his case in the face of Tian . No one was above observance of filial piety in accordance with righteousness. In responding to a question regarding government and control of unruly subjects, Confucius is reported as saying:

Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend, when the wind blows across it. ( Analects 12.19; Tamblyn, p. 38)

Filial piety (and the rest) was informed by Ren which means not only 'benevolence' but that which makes a human truly human, one's basic humanity, which understands right from wrong and instinctively leans toward what is right. Expressed in behavior, Confucius coined the so-called Silver Rule, a much earlier version of the Golden Rule attributed to Jesus Christ ('silver' because the concept is expressed in the negative), when he said, "whatsoever you do not want done to you, do not do to another" ( Analects 12:2) which appears in his response to a question on defining perfect virtue:

It is, when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a great guest; to employ the people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice; not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself; to have no murmuring against you in the country, and none in the family. ( Analects 12:2; Tamblyn, p. 36)

By adhering to these precepts, in accordance with the rituals which encouraged them, one would attain the state of junzi (literally “lord's son”) which meant a superior individual and is usually translated as 'gentleman'. A junzi recognized the order of the world and his – or her – place in it (since Confucius understood women as in need of as much instruction as men, although his era did not allow for it formally) and, through adherence to Confucius' teachings would behave well, in the interests of all involved, and live in peace with one's self and others.

Confucius' philosophy was reformed and popularized by the philosopher and Confucian scholar Mencius who, like Confucius himself, traveled state-to-state preaching Confucian ideals in an effort to end the chaos of the Warring States Period. His efforts at converting the ruling class were no more successful than those of Confucius but he did introduce Confucian precepts to a wider audience than it had at Confucius' death. Confucianism's cause was furthered by another scholar-philosopher, the last of the Five Great Sages of Confucianism, Xunzi (also given as Xun Kuang, l. c. 310 - c. 235 BCE) who reformed the system further, offering a much more pragmatic (or pessimistic) vision of the philosophy, closer in some aspects to Legalism, but still retaining the basic precepts, which he expressed in his work Xunzi .

Confucianism was rejected by the Qin Dynasty because it was critical of Qin policy. The first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Shi Huangdi (r. 221-210 BCE), established a repressive regime, completely at odds with Confucian ideals, and adopted Legalism as the state philosophy in order to strictly control the populace. Confucianism was almost erased from history during the time known as the Burning of the Books and the Burying of Scholars c. 213-210 BCE, but the books were preserved by adherents who hid them from authorities.

The philosophy was revived by the Han Dynasty under its first emperor Gaozu (r. 202-195 BCE) who reestablished the values of the Zhou Dynasty. Confucianism was later made the national philosophy under Wu the Great. By the time of his reign, 141-87 BCE, Confucianism had already gained a substantial following, but Wu's decree would solidify and expand its influence.

For the next 2,000 years, Confucianism would be the dominant philosophy of China, even during periods – such as the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) – when Taoism was more popular. In the 20th century CE, Confucianism was rejected by Chinese cultural reformers who felt it was outdated and by the Chinese Communist Party because of its insistence on a social hierarchy at odds with the communist ideal. Mohism, with its vision of universal love regardless of social standing, was advocated instead.

By this time, however, Confucian ideals had become so closely interwoven with Chinese culture that there was no way of separating the two. Confucianism continues to be observed, whether directly as a belief-system-of-choice or simply culturally in the present day and continues to gain adherents around the world. Of the many philosophies of the so-called One Hundred Schools of Thought, Confucius' vision ultimately triumphed by providing a specific way to live toward a greater good to live for.

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Bibliography

• Baird, F. & Heimbeck, R. S. Philosophic Classics: Asian Philosophy. Routledge, 2005.
• Confucius & Giles, L. The Analects of Confucius. The Easton Press, 1986.
• Confucius & Tamblyn, N. The Complete Confucius. Golding Books, 2016.
• Ebrey, P. B. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Koller, J. M. Asian Philosophies. Prentice Hall, 2007.
• Sima, Qian & Watson, B. Records of the Grand Historian. Columbia University Press, 1995.
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• Waley, A. Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China. Stanford University Press, 2010.

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Life of Confucius

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Although the facts about the life of Chinese philosopher Confucius are scanty, they do establish a precise time frame and historical context. Confucius was born in the 22nd year of the reign of Duke Xiang of Lu (551 BCE). The traditional claim that he was born on the 27th day of the eighth lunar month has been questioned by historians, but September 28 is still widely observed in East Asia as Confucius’s birthday.

What is Confucius known for?

Confucius is known as the first teacher in China who wanted to make education broadly available and who was instrumental in establishing the art of teaching as a vocation. He also established ethical, moral, and social standards that formed the basis of a way of life known as Confucianism .

What was Confucius’s early life like?

Confucius’s ancestors were probably members of the aristocracy who had become poverty-stricken commoners by the time of his birth. His father died when Confucius was only three years old. Instructed first by his mother, Confucius distinguished himself as an indefatigable learner in his teens.

Confucius (born 551, Qufu , state of Lu [now in Shandong province, China]—died 479 bce , Lu) was China’s most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, whose ideas have profoundly influenced the civilizations of China and other East Asian countries.

Confucius was born near the end of an era known in Chinese history as the Spring and Autumn Period (770–481 BCE ). His home was in Lu, a regional state of eastern China in what is now central and southwestern Shandong province. Like other regional states at the time, Lu was bound to the imperial court of the Zhou dynasty (1045–221 BCE ) through history, culture , family ties (which stretched back to the dynasty’s founding, when relatives of the Zhou rulers were enfeoffed as heads of the regional states), and moral obligations. According to some reports, Confucius’s early ancestors were the Kongs from the state of Song—an aristocratic family that produced several eminent counselors for the Song rulers. By the mid-7th century BCE , however, the family had lost political standing and most of its wealth, and some of the Kongs—Confucius’s great-grandfather being one—had relocated to the state of Lu.

The Kongs of Lu were common gentlemen ( shi ) with none of the hereditary entitlements their ancestors had once enjoyed in Song. The common gentlemen of the late Zhou dynasty could boast of their employability in the army or in any administrative position—because they were educated in the six arts of ritual ( see below Teachings of Confucius), music, archery, charioteering, writing, and arithmetic—but in the social hierarchy of the time they were just a notch higher than the common folk. Confucius’s father, Shu-liang He, had been a warrior and served as a district steward in Lu, but he was already an old man when Confucius was born. A previous marriage had given him nine daughters and a clubfooted son, and so it was with Confucius that he was finally granted a healthy heir. But Shu-liang He died soon after Confucius’s birth, leaving his young widow to fend for herself.

Confucius was candid about his family background. He said that, because he was “poor and from a lowly station,” he could not enter government service as easily as young men from prominent families and so had to become “skilled in many menial things” ( Analects [ Lunyu ], 9:6). He found employment first with the Jisun clan, a hereditary family whose principal members had for many decades served as chief counselors to the rulers of Lu. A series of modest positions with the Jisuns—as keeper of granaries and livestock and as district officer in the family’s feudal domain—led to more important appointments in the Lu government, first as minister of works and then as minister of crime.

Records of the time suggest that, as minister of crime, Confucius was effective in handling problems of law and order but was even more impressive in diplomatic assignments. He always made sure that the ruler and his mission were well prepared for the unexpected and for situations that might put them in harm’s way; he also knew how to advise them to bring a difficult negotiation to a successful conclusion. Yet he held his office for only a few years. His resignation was the result of a protracted struggle with the hereditary families—which, for generations, had been trying to wrestle power away from the legitimate rulers of Lu. Confucius found the actions of the families transgressive and their ritual indiscretions objectionable, and he was willing to fight by fair means or foul to have the power of the ruler restored. A major clash took place in 498 BCE . A plan to steer the families toward self-ruin backfired. The heads of the families suspected Confucius, and so he had no choice but to leave his position and his home.

The self-exile took Confucius on a long journey: first to Wei, the state just west of Lu, then southward to the state of Song, and finally to the states of Chen and Cai. The journey lasted 14 years, and Confucius spent much of that time looking for rulers who might be willing to accept his influence and be guided by his vision of virtuous government. Although his search was ultimately in vain, he never gave up, because he was eager for someone to “put me to use” ( Analects , 17:5). He said to those who found his ambitions suspect, “How can I be like a bitter gourd that hangs from the end of a string and can not be eaten?” ( Analects , 17:7).

Confucius was emboldened to think that he could set things right in the world, because he was born at a time when such aspirations were within the reach of men living in circumstances similar to his. By the mid-6th century BCE the Zhou dynasty was approaching its 500th year. The political framework that the dynastic founders had put in place—an enfeoffment system held together by family ties—was still standing, but the joints had been giving out since the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period, and so the structure, if not shored up, was in danger of collapse. The regional rulers, who were relatives of the Zhou king, should have been his strongest supporters, but they preferred to pursue their own ambitions. In the century before Confucius’s birth, two or three of them simply acted on behalf of the king, and under their watch the empire managed to hold itself together and to keep enemies at bay. By Confucius’s time, however, such leaders had disappeared. No one among the regional rulers was interested in the security of the empire or the idea of the greater good. Petty feuds for petty gains consumed most of their time, while lethargy took up the rest. The same could be said of the members of the aristocratic class, who had once aided their ruler in government. Now they were gaining the upper hand, and some were so brazen as to openly compete with their ruler for wealth and women. Their apathy and ineptitude , however, allowed the common gentlemen—men like Confucius, who had once been in their service—to step in and take charge of the administrative functions of the government.

The common gentlemen, at this point, still could not displace the aristocrats as the society’s elite. Yet, if they worked hard enough and were smart, they could exert influence in most political contests. But the more discerning among them set their goals higher. They saw an opportunity to introduce a few new ideas about worth ( xian ) and nobleness ( shang )—which, they felt, could challenge assumptions that had been used to justify the existing social hierarchy . They asked whether ability and strength of character should be the measures of a person’s worth and whether men of noble rank should be stripped of their titles and privileges for incompetence and moral indiscretion. Those who posed such questions were not merely seeking to compete in the political world. They wanted to change unspoken rules so as to favour the virtuous and the competent. This, in part, explains what Confucius was trying to teach. He believed that the moral resolve of a few could have a beneficial effect on the fate of the many. But integrity alone, in his view, would not be enough. Good men had to be tested in politics: they should equip themselves with knowledge and skills, serve their rulers well, and prove their worth through their moral influence.

The man Confucius looked back to for inspiration and guidance was Zhougong (the Duke of Zhou)—a brother of the founder of the Zhou dynasty and the regent of the king’s young son Chengwang. Despite the temporal distance between them, Confucius believed that he and the Duke of Zhou wanted the same thing for the dynasty: social harmony and political stability grounded in trust and mutual moral obligations, with minimal resort to legal rules. But the Duke of Zhou was royalty and Confucius was a professional bureaucrat , which meant that he had limited political authority. And even the authority he possessed was transient , depending on whether he had a government job. Without an official position, Confucius also would not be entitled (for example) to host a feast, to assist a ruler in a sacrifice, or to take part in any of the occasions that were the living components of the political order that the Duke of Zhou had envisioned and Confucius strongly endorsed . Thus, Confucius was distressed when he was unemployed—anxious about not being of use to the world and about not having material support. Men who knew him on his travels wondered whether his eagerness for a political position might have led him to overplay his hand and whether he had compromised his principles by allowing disreputable men and women to act as his intermediaries. His critics included the three or four of his disciples who accompanied him on his exile.

Confucius’s disciples were considerably younger than him. He did not actively recruit them when he was a counselor in Lu. He did not found any school or academy. Young men from a wide range of backgrounds—sons of aristocrats, children of common gentlemen, merchants, farmers, artisans, and even criminals and sons of criminals—chose to attach themselves to him in order to learn from him skills that might get them started on a path toward an official career. In the process, they acquired a lot more: in particular, a gentleman’s refinement and moral acuity , which in Confucius’s mind were essential to a political profession. Confucius was the “master” ( zi ) to these followers, who called themselves his “disciples” or “apprentices” ( tu ). Among his earliest disciples, three stood out: Zigong, Zilu, and Yan Hui.

Zigong had been a merchant before becoming Confucius’s disciple . He was articulate and shrewd and quick on his feet. Confucius observed in him a resolve to improve his lot and the promise of becoming a fine diplomat or a financial manager. He enjoyed Zigong’s company because Zigong was someone with whom he could share his thoughts about the world and the people they knew and about poetry and ritual practices ( Analects , 11:3; 1:15; 11:19; 5:9).

Zilu, unlike Zigong, was rough and unhewn, a rustic man. Confucius knew that Zilu would do anything to protect him from harm: “wrestle a tiger with his bare hands” or “follow him on the open sea in a bamboo raft.” Yet , Confucius felt, simply being brave and loyal was “hardly the way to be good,” because, without the advantage of thought and a love for learning, people would not be able to know whether their judgment had been misguided or whether their actions might lead them and others onto a perilous road, if not a violent end ( Analects , 5:7; 7:11). Still, Confucius took Zilu in, for he was someone “who did not feel ashamed standing next to a man wearing fox or badger fur while himself dressed in a tattered gown padded with silk floss” and who was so reliable that “by speaking from just one side of a dispute” in a court of law he could “bring a legal dispute to a conclusion” ( Analects , 9:27; 12:12). Besides, Confucius did not deny instruction to anyone who wanted to learn and was unwilling to give up when trying to solve a difficult problem. In return, he expected nothing more than a bundle of dried meat as a gift ( Analects , 7:7).

Yet even that modest offer was probably beyond the means of another disciple, Yan Hui, who was from a poor family and who was content with “living in a shabby neighborhood on a bowlful of millet and a ladleful of water” ( Analects , 6:11). No hardship or privation could have distracted him from his love of learning and his desire to know the good. Yan Hui was Confucius’s favourite, and, when he died before his time, Confucius was so bereft that other disciples wondered whether such a display of emotion was appropriate. To this their teacher responded, “If not for this man, for whom should I show so much sorrow?” ( Analects , 11:9; 11:10).

It was these three—Zigong, Zilu, and Yan Hui—who followed Confucius on his long journey into the unknown. In doing so, they left behind not only their homes and families but also career opportunities in Lu that could have been gainful.

Their first stop was the state of Wei. Zilu had relatives there who could have introduced Confucius to the state’s ruler. There were others, too—powerful men in the ruler’s service—who knew of Confucius’s reputation and were willing to help him. But none of these connections landed Confucius a job. Part of the problem was Confucius himself: he was unwilling to pursue any avenues that might obligate him to those who could bring him trouble rather than aid. Also, the ruler of Wei was not interested in finding a capable man who could offer him counsel . Moreover, he had plenty of distractions—conflicts with neighbouring states and at home in Wei—to fill his time. Still, Confucius was patient, waiting four years before he was granted an audience. But the meeting was disappointing: it only confirmed what Confucius already knew about this man’s character and judgment. Soon after their encounter, the ruler died, and Confucius saw no further reason to remain in Wei. Thus, he headed south with his disciples.

Before reaching the state of Chen, his next stop, two incidents along the road nearly took his life. In one, a military officer, Huan Tui, tried to ambush Confucius as he was passing through the state of Song. In another, he was surrounded by a mob in the town of Kuang, and for a time it looked as though he might be killed. These incidents were not spontaneous but were the machinations of Confucius’s enemies. But who would have wanted him dead, and what could he have done to provoke such reactions? Historians in later eras speculated about the causes and resolutions of these crises. Although they never found an adequate explanation for Huan Tui’s action, some suggested that the mob of Kuang mistook Confucius for someone else. In any event, the Analects , the most reliable source on Confucius’s life, records only what Confucius said at those moments when he realized that death might be imminent . “Heaven has given me this power—this virtue . What can Huan Tui do to me!” was his response after he learned about Huan Tui’s plan to ambush him ( Analects , 7:23). His utterance at the siege of Kuang conveyed even greater confidence that Heaven would stand by him. He said that with the founder of the Zhou dynasty dead, this man’s cultural vestiges “are invested in me.” And since “Heaven has not destroyed this culture” and does not intend to do so, it will look after the cultural heirs of the Zhou. Thus, Confucius declaimed, “What can the people of Kuang do to me?” ( Analects , 9:5).

Emboldened by his purpose, Confucius continued his journey to Chen, where he spent three uneventful years. Eventually, a major war between Chen and a neighbouring state led him to journey west toward the state of Chu, not knowing that another kind of trial was awaiting him. This time, “the provisions ran out,” and “his followers became so weak that none of them could rise up on their feet” ( Analects 15:2). The brief account in this record prompted writers in later centuries to speculate about how Confucius might have behaved in this situation. Was he calm or vexed? How did he talk to his disciples? How did he help them come to terms with their predicament? And which disciple understood him best and offered him solace ? None of these stories could claim veracity , but, taken together, they humanized the characters involved and filled, if only imaginatively, the gaps in the historical sources.

Confucius and his companions went only as far as a border town of Chu before they decided to turn back and retrace their steps, first to Chen and then to Wei. The journey took more than three years, and, after reaching Wei, Confucius stayed there for another two years. Meanwhile, two of his disciples, Zigong and Ran Qiu, decided to leave Confucius in Wei and accept employment in the government of Lu. At once Zigong proved his talent in diplomacy , and Ran Qiu did the same in warfare. It was probably these two men who approached the ruler and the chief counselor of Lu, asking them to make a generous offer to Confucius to entice him back. Their plan worked. The Zuozhuan (“Zuo Commentary”), an early source on the history of this period ( see below Classic works), notes that, in the 11th year of the reign of Duke Ai of Lu (484 BCE ), a summons from the duke arrived along with a gift of a handsome sum. “Thereupon, Confucius returned home.”

After his return, Confucius did not seek any position in the Lu government. He did not have to. The present ruler and his counselors regarded him as the “state’s elder” ( guolao ). They either approached him directly for advice or used his disciples as intermediaries. The number of his disciples multiplied. The success of Zigong and Ran Qiu must have enhanced his reputation as a person who could prepare young men for political careers. But those who were drawn to him for this reason often found themselves becoming interested in questions other than how to advance in the world ( Analects , 2:18). Some asked about the idea of virtue, about the moral requisites for serving in government, or about the meanings of phrases such as “keen perception” and “clouded judgment” ( Analects , 12:6; 12:10). Others wanted to know how to pursue knowledge and how to read abstruse texts for insights ( Analects , 3:8). Confucius tried to answer these questions as best as he could, but his responses could vary depending on the temperament of the interlocutor, leading to confusion among his students when they tried to compare notes ( Analects , 11:22). This way of instructing was wholly in tune with what Confucius believed to be the role of a teacher. A teacher could only “point out one corner of a square,” he said; it was up to the students “to come back with the other three” ( Analects , 7:8). To teach, therefore, is “to impart light” ( hui ): to provide guidance to students and to entice them forward, so that even when they are tired and dispirited, even when they want to give up, they cannot. In a similar vein, Confucius said of himself, “I am the sort of man who forgets to eat when trying to solve a problem, who is so joyful that I forget my worries and do not become aware of the onset of old age” ( Analects , 7:19).

When old age did arrive, Confucius discovered that the act of holding his conduct and judgment to the right measure no longer bore him down. “At 70,” he said, “I followed what my heart desired without overstepping the line” ( Analects , 2:4). This, however, did not mean that Confucius was free of care. Historians and philosophers in later centuries typically portrayed a careworn Confucius in his final days. Yet he still rejoiced in life because life astonished him, and the will in all living things to carry on in spite of setbacks and afflictions inspired him. It was the pine and the cypress Confucius admired most, because “they are the last to lose their needles” ( Analects , 9:28). He died at the age of 73 on the 11th day of the fourth lunar month in the year 479 BCE .

Sources on the life of Confucius are sparse. Official annals and other historical sources of the late Spring and Autumn Period rarely mention his name because he did not play a conspicuous role in the political world. In fact, he barely existed in that world, since most of his life was spent either in preparation for such a career or in exile. Yet the gaps in the historical records were eventually beneficial, because they prompted later scholars to look for any trace of evidence that might reveal something new about him. Unfortunately, such searches often led to imaginative conjectures about Confucius, as in the account by a writer of the 3rd century BCE in which Confucius described himself as a yellow chi (homeless dragon) swimming in the turbid water but drinking from the clear. Confucius, in this writer’s mind, could have chosen to live like a true dragon and never leave his pristine pool, but he preferred to be a chi . Throughout early Chinese history, there were many such writers, and the source they turned to repeatedly for understanding and inspiration was the Analects .

The Analects is the work most closely associated with Confucius. It is a record of his life in fragments, collected into 20 sections. The sections contain descriptions of his character, deportment, and moments of his life in exile or at home in Lu; bits of conversations he had with his disciples and other people he knew; and remarks spoken in his voice but often in the absence of a context . Without the aid of commentaries, this work—which also lacks any apparent organization—can be misleading or discouraging for some readers. Yet, with patience and attentiveness, it is possible to glean from the gathered pieces flashes of Confucius’s genius and the elements of his humanity. The Analects probably took shape within the first century after Confucius’s death. A handful of younger disciples—who make their appearances rather forcefully at the beginning and the end of the work—could have initiated the project, but it took another 200–300 years of tinkering—with some passages being omitted and others appended or modified—before the text settled into its present form. Material evidence of the age of the standard text emerged from the ground in 1973, when archaeologists opened the tomb of the prince of Zhongshan ( Liu Xiu , also known as King Huai), a relative of the Han emperor Wudi . The tomb, dated to 55 BCE , was discovered in Hebei province about 100 miles south of Beijing . The Analects , written on bamboo strips, was included among the grave objects that accompanied the prince to his afterlife.

A second work that is central to the study of Confucius and his thought is the Zuo Zhuan (“Zuo Commentary”). Although it is a commentary on the Chunqiu , the official annals of the state of Lu covering the Spring and Autumn Period, it does more than provide background and narrative structure for the events listed chronologically in the annals. The Zuo writer probably had at his disposal a wide range of scribal records, the most important of which were speeches of rulers and counselors and of men and women who had played a role in the political fate of their families and their states during the late Zhou dynasty. The best of these speeches reflect the characters of the speakers and the cultural practices that guided their moral decision making . They also throw light on Confucius’s intellectual ancestry and the roots of his moral thinking. Confucius never professed to be an original thinker. He said, “I transmit but do not innovate. I love antiquity and have faith in it” ( Analects , 7:1). The Zuo Zhuan offers a view of China in the 200 years before Confucius’s birth, which was not the antiquity Confucius had in mind. But when one reads it together with the early classics on rites ( see below Teachings of Confucius), poetry, and history, it can take one to the knowledge that Confucius intended to transmit.

The third source is a long biography of Confucius written in the 1st century BCE . The author, Sima Qian , is China’s most distinguished historian, and the biography remains the standard in Chinese historiography. Even though later scholars did not find all his stories believable and saw logistical problems in his account of Confucius’s travels, they were willing to overlook such questions because of Sima Qian’s rare talent for improving the records imaginatively and reconstructing the interior lives of his subjects. In his biography of Confucius, Sima Qian tried to work mostly with the Analects , grouping individual utterances together to make them cohere and expanding isolated episodes by adding more characters and action. The biography was not altogether elegant or persuasive, but it was the earliest attempt to thread together into a continuous narrative the fragments in the Analects and the stories about Confucius that had been circulating through the works of historians and philosophers in the 300 years since his death.

Confucius thought that the rites, or ritual ( li )—encompassing and expressing proper human conduct in all spheres of life—could steady a man and anchor a government and that their practice should begin at home. “Give your parents no cause for worry other than your illness,” he said. “When your parents are alive, do not travel to distant places, and if you have to travel, you must tell them exactly where you are going” ( Analects , 2:6, 4:19). But what if your parents are thinking of doing something wrong? “Be gentle when trying to dissuade them from wrongdoing,” Confucius advised. “If you see that they are inclined not to heed your advice, remain reverent ( jing ). Do not openly challenge them. Do not be resentful even when they wear you out and make you anxious” ( Analects , 4:18). Every human relationship is a balancing act, and the one between child and parents is the most demanding yet the most deserving of attention and patience, because it is rooted in love and the child’s earliest memories of warmth and affection. Confucius did not want children to be acquiescent in situations that call for their judgment. At the same time, he discouraged confrontation even when the parents are culpable. He worried that parents might lose their sense of proportion and their child’s affection for them, and so he urged the child to “remain reverent” even if the parents are not inclined to heed the child’s advice. The rites, therefore, enable the child to avoid a clash without having to betray principles. But unless the child “acts according to the spirit of the rites, in being respectful, he will tire himself out; in being cautious, he will become timid” ( Analects , 8:2).

In the eyes of his contemporaries, Confucius was someone who embodied that spirit. They observed that “at court when he was speaking with the counselors of the lower rank, he was relaxed and affable . When speaking with counselors of the higher rank, he was frank but respectful. And in the ruler’s presence, though he was filled with reverence and awe, he was perfectly composed” ( Analects ,10:2).

The spirit of the rites is the ineffable, and, therefore, different from prescribed rules. It awaits the person with knowledge and awareness and skills in deportment to put it into motion, for every occasion is different. The circumstances change, and they change even as the occasion unfolds. Thus, when Confucius was inside the temple of the Duke of Zhou, “he asked questions about everything”; he knew the procedures of the sacrifice, yet he still approached the rites as if he were performing them for the first time. “Asking questions,” he said, “is the correct practice of the rites” ( Analects , 3:15).

An education in the Odes, the earliest collection of Chinese poetry, complements an education in the rites. The Odes “can give the spirit exhortation, the mind keener eyes,” Confucius said. “They can make us better adjusted in a group and more articulate when voicing a complaint” ( Analects , 17:9). He told his son, “Unless you learn the Odes, you won’t be able to speak” ( Analects , 16:13). Just as the legendary sage emperor Shun (c. 23rd century BCE ) told the director of music to teach the children poetry—to let the poems become their voice—so that “the straightforward shall yet be gentle, the magnanimous shall yet be dignified”—Confucius, too, hoped that the Odes would become his son’s speech, because such utterances are always appropriate and so will “never swerve from the path” ( Analects , 2:2). For him, a love poem from the Odes, called Guanju (“Fishhawk”), best illustrates this point. The poem tells the reader that in yearning for the woman he desired, the wooer did not suffer unduly, and in courting his lady, he did not make a vulgar display of his feelings. The poem reads: “With harps we bring her company,” and “with bells and drums do her delight.” Of the tone and sentiment in this poem, Confucius said, “There is joy but no immodest thoughts, sorrow but no self-injury” ( Analects , 3:20).

The music Confucius loved best was the ancient music known as shao . When he first heard it, he said, “I never imagined that music could be this beautiful,” and “for the next three months he did not notice the taste of meat” ( Analects , 7:14). The music of shao is associated with the story of how Shun ascended to power upon the decision of Emperor Yao (c. 24th century BCE ), Shun’s predecessor, to abdicate in favour of a man who grew up in the wilds but whose love for virtue was like the rush of a torrent. According to the Shujing , a compilation of documents related to China’s early history, when the music was played in the court of Emperor Shun, not only men but gods and spirits, birds and beasts were drawn to it. Such was the power of music that embodied the tenor and vehicle of a moral government.

Whereas Confucius looked upon music as the culmination of culture—of notes “bright and distinct” gathering in fluency and harmony—the Confucian philosopher Mencius (c. 371–c. 289 BCE ) took the idea in another direction, seeing it as a trope of Confucius’s achievements ( Analects , 3:23). In the work most closely associated with him (the Mencius ), Mencius said that only Confucius could advance or retreat, serve or not serve “according to circumstances” and in a timely fashion, and, like a symphony perfectly brought together, “from the ringing of bells at the beginning to the sound of the jade tubes at the end,” there was an internal order ( Mencius , 5B:1). The order found in the music of shao or in the conduct of a person suggests the ultimate good, but it is not an abstract idea, for it effects an emotional pull—a gravitating toward the music or the person possessing it. It has a kind of magic because it reflects a rightness in sound or in human deliberation. And this rightness of expression or intent serves a higher ideal, which Confucius called humaneness ( ren ).

When his disciple Zigong asked him what is humaneness, Confucius replied, “Do not impose on others what you do not want [others to impose on you]” ( Analects , 15:24). A humane man is someone who is able “to make analogies from what is close at hand” ( Analects , 6:30). He uses this knowledge to imagine the humanity in others, and he relies on his learning of rites and music to hold him to the right measure. Confucius was often asked whether someone was humane, and in response he always gave a careful assessment of the person’s strengths. He would say, for example, that the man “did his best” in fulfilling his public duty, “had administrative talents,” or “wanted nothing to defile him”—but such virtue, he would add, did not imply that the man was humane ( Analects , 5:8; 5:19). In fact, Confucius claimed that he had never met anyone who was truly humane. This, however, did not mean that humaneness was beyond reach. “As soon as I desire humaneness, it is here,” he said, and everyone he had come across had sufficient strength “to devote all his effort to the practice of humaneness” ( Analects , 7:30; 4:6). Humaneness “is beautiful ( mei ),” and most people are drawn to it, yet, Confucius observed, few will choose to pursue it ( Analects , 4:1; 4:6). That resistance suggests a rich and more complex notion of human nature , without which morality could not come into play. And, as his disciple Zengzi (505–436 BCE ) said, only the strong and resolute are game for the quest, because “the road is long” and “ends only with death.” ( Analects , 8:7).

Confucius gave his teachings on humaneness a political dimension, though they seemed to be intended for the self. He observed that Emperor Shun was able to order the world simply by perfecting his own humanity and by cultivating a respectful demeanour. “If you set an example by correcting your mistakes, who dares not to correct his mistakes?” he asked the counselor Jikangzi. “Just desire the good and the people will be good. The character of those at the top is like that of the wind. The character of those below is like that of grass. When wind blows over the grass, the grass is sure to bend” ( Analects , 12:17; 12:19). But when asked what should come first when administrating a state, he said “trust” ( xin ). If a ruler’s words and actions do not inspire trust, Confucius asserts , his government will certainly perish, even though he might ensure enough food to feed the people and adequate arms to defend them ( Analects , 12:7). Confucius thought that the classic enfeoffment system of the early Zhou dynasty came very close to an ideal government because it was grounded in the trust between the Zhou emperor in the west and the relatives he sent east with vested authority to create new colonies for the young empire. Such a government, reinforced with the civilizing powers of rites and music, does not need complex laws and edicts to keep the people in check. Confucius said, “Guide the people with ordinances and statutes and keep them in line with [threats of] punishment, they will try to stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. If you guide them with exemplary virtue and keep them in line with the practice of the rites, they will have sense of shame and will know to reform themselves” ( Analects , 2:3).

Few people knew how to reform themselves in Confucius’s time, and there was nearly no one among their rulers for them to look up to. But Confucius still had faith in professional advisers like himself, who, in the tradition of the great counselors of the past, were able to make rulers great with their hard work, discernment , and deft ways of moral suasion.

The next 250 years of Chinese history, known as the Warring States Period, was even more fraught with tension and uncertainty than the one Confucius had known. A ruler’s success at this later time was measured by the size and number of his conquests, achieved through military operations and political maneuvers. The means to power also became more violent and sophisticated. Accordingly, followers of Confucius either held on to certain aspects of his teachings with a tighter grip or realized the need to adapt what he had said to the political reality of their times. Mencius was a member of the first group and Xunzi (c. 300–c. 230 BCE ) of the second. Xunzi, who followed Mencius by about a century, severely criticized his predecessor . In his major work, now called the Xunzi , he accused Mencius of misleading “the dim-witted scholars of the vulgar age,” letting them believe that Mencius’s own “aberrant” and “esoteric” doctrines are the “true words” of Confucius ( Xunzi , Chapter 6, “Contra Twelve Philosophers”). Later Confucians, who made much of the differences between the two philosophers, pointed to their theories of human nature as the source of their disagreement. But the fixation on that subject tended to obscure their more important differences regarding such topics as education and self-knowledge, feelings and intellect, law and adjudication, and the moral risks of a political profession.

Both Mencius and Xunzi took up the subject of moral judgment—the most difficult of human responsibilities in Confucius’s view—and explored it with greater precision and urgency than Confucius had done . On the question of which of the human faculties should play the deciding role, Mencius opted for the heart while Xunzi favoured the mind. Mencius believed that “every person has a heart that is sensitive to the sufferings of others”; therefore, he said, the sight of a young child about to fall into a well would horrify anyone who might be a witness and afflict that person with pain ( Mencius , 2A:6). The horror—and the pain—is an unthinking response from the heart, which Mencius presented as proof that all humans are born with good impulses. People who lack the feeling of commiseration have only themselves to blame; they must have let go of their inborn nature, Mencius observed, and left their hearts morally barren ( Mencius , 6A:8).

Mencius’s theory of human nature is bold. He claimed that he had gotten it from Confucius, though one learns from the Analects that Confucius did not like to talk about human nature ( Analects , 5:13). However, given what Confucius said about learning—“Being human and yet lacking in humaneness—what can such a man do with the rites?” or “with music?”—he must have had some notion of human nature, which was likely to have been positive ( Analects , 3:3). Mencius, for his part, wanted to go much further by using his theory of human nature as the basis of an entire moral philosophy . Thus, he speculated on ways of extending the heart’s potential and on how the larger world would be affected if that potential were fulfilled. Using a legendary figure to illustrate the key points of his teaching, Mencius related how the emperor Shun was able to emerge from the darkest of family histories (insensate father, cruel stepmother, and scheming half brother) to become a perfected self. Indeed, according to Mencius, at no time—not even when his family was plotting against his life—was Shun ever resentful or disrespectful toward his parents ( Mencius , 5A:1, 2, 3). It was a moving, but not altogether credible, tale of strength gained through self-examination.

Confucius would have recognized Mencius’s story as an expression of what he had taught about filiality, but he would not have gone as far as Mencius did in making Shun the supreme model of filiality and in suggesting that such virtue was all a ruler would need “to give ease to his people” ( Mencius , 5A.5). In fact, Confucius said that even Shun, a supremely cultivated ruler, found such a task “difficult to do” ( Analects , 6.30).

Although Mencius’s political thought might today seem somewhat simplistic, he had a respectable following among the young; he also made a good living as a political counselor, and his service was often in demand. The rulers of his time did not mind listening to his remonstrances because, despite his reproving voice, he always included a positive message about their moral potential. He would tell them that no matter what sorts of transgressions they may have committed in the past, they could always recover their potential to do good if they applied themselves. Mencius was optimistic about the human condition and was willing to forego history and gloss over inconsistencies in his teachings in order to pursue his vision ( Mencius , 7B:3).

Xunzi, on the other hand, was always seeking clarity—clarity of thought and words and a clear-eyed view of reality. He did not set out to challenge Mencius and did not mean to be polemical when he said that human nature is repellent. He simply wanted to give a discomforting and more truthful account of what human beings are like in order to get them moving more quickly on the road to reform. To that end, he wrote about desires—how to manage them before they become obsessively out of control ( Xunzi , Chapter 21, “Dispelling Obsessions”); about power—how to use it effectively and properly when one has it; and about the difference between brute force and the authority of a true king ( Xunzi , Chapter 11, “Kings and Lord-Protectors”). Xunzi traveled widely abroad and was active in political circles, working with several heads of state and witnessing their horrific deeds and misconduct. In fact, the most violent chapter in the history of the late Warring States Period occurred in Xunzi’s ancestral state of Zhao in the year 260 BCE , when Xunzi happened to be there. Thousands of Zhao soldiers were buried alive on this occasion by the army of the Qin dynasty after they had surrendered. Perhaps because of what he had seen and experienced, Xunzi liked to use startling images and shocking analogies in his writing to shake the men of his time from their mental lassitude and moral idleness. To one such man, a prime minister of the state of Qi who aspired to follow the great kings of the past but had not yet taken the first step, Xunzi said, “For you [to harbour such ambitions] is analogous to lying down flat on one’s face and trying to lick the sky or trying to rescue a man who had hanged himself by pulling at his feet” ( Xunzi , Chapter 16, “On Strengthening the State”).

Along with his warnings, Xunzi offered guidance and examples from more distant history, using the Duke of Zhou and his father, Wenwang , among others, as models of conduct and character. Of the Duke of Zhou, Xunzi said that he was born into power and knew how to utilize it, and, even when his actions might have seemed irregular, people trusted him as they trusted the four seasons—such was the integrity of this man ( Xunzi , Chapter 8: “Teachings of the Ru”).

Confucius also admired the Duke of Zhou for his political vision and for having seen the young dynasty through a perilous time. And he believed that having the trust of the people was the first item of business for a ruler, because without it the government could not stand on firm ground. In these ways, Confucius was Xunzi’s precursor . Confucius also stressed the importance of maintaining some emotional distance from matters that require judgment, but Xunzi placed more emphasis on the mind’s potential. He went as far as to say that a balanced and discerning mind could offer a more precise measure of right and wrong and that the perspicuity of the mind, not the stirring of the heart, should be a person’s moral compass. This was the essential difference between Xunzi and Mencius.

Many later Confucians sided with Mencius, and rulers tended to accept his teachings, as they did during Mencius’s lifetime, because his voice was less taxing on their conscience (rulers also knew that they could bend his words to suit their ways). Mencian ideas were spread further in the 11th and 12th centuries CE by Confucians of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Thinkers such as Cheng Yi (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200), in their attempt to create a new Confucian philosophy to meet the challenges of Buddhist metaphysics and meditative practices, finding preliminary support in Mencius’s concepts of human nature and self-cultivation, subscribed to Mencius’s understanding of Confucius. The Mencius also gained prominence in their academies. Successors of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi in the subsequent Yuan dynasty (1206–1368) would go further by including the Mencius in government examinations, thus making his relationship with the state even tighter.

Xunzi, in the meantime, was pushed aside. Confucians in the Song and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties rejected him because his writings on human nature threatened to undermine their belief that the achievement of self-knowledge is the fulfillment of humanity’s inborn promise. Although there was more interest in Xunzi in the subsequent Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12), when scholars thought highly of his intellectual range and his writings on learning and politics, Xunzi did not supplant Mencius in the order of their affections. However, since the recent discovery of bamboo-strip texts dating from the Warring States Period ( see below Contemporary scholarship on Confucian thought), Xunzi has gained more attention from scholars. Indeed, several of these excavated texts seem to resonate with Xunzi’s writings in both style and substance. That this should be so suggests that Confucius probably had a larger variety of heirs in early China than scholars have imagined, many more than the Song Confucians would have liked to believe. Confucius himself would have been pleased with this revelation. He would have preferred a richer and messier history of his legacy over any single line of transmission.

In 1993, after the discovery of the bamboo-strip Analects , two other groups of manuscripts, on moral cultivation and political thought, were discovered in Hebei province, which led to a revival of scholarship on Confucian thought. The manuscripts, also written on bamboo strips, were dated to c. 300 BCE or earlier, during the Warring States Period, before China was unified. One batch of texts was dug up by archaeologists, and the other was taken by robbers from an unknown grave, smuggled to Hong Kong , and then sold to the Shanghai Museum through an arrangement orchestrated by antique dealers.

Confucius appeared, often with an interlocutor , in eight of the published texts from the Shanghai Museum collection. Since most of the texts are incomplete—with missing or damaged strips—it is difficult to establish just how much they add to scholars’ knowledge and idea of Confucius. Even so, the material evidence firmly places him in Warring States history. Either in conversation with a disciple or with a counselor about the drought in Lu or the cause of social unrest, this was a Confucius animated by speech and still trying to think through the most confounding problems of the human condition.

Early materials associated with Confucius continued to surface in the early 21st century. In 2011, an excavation of a Han dynasty tomb in the northern outskirts of the city of Nanchang , in Jiangxi province, uncovered a bamboo text of the Analects , a covered mirror with painted images of Confucius and two of his disciples, all identified by their names and short citations from the Analects , and Sima Qian’s biography of Confucius. The tomb belonged to Liu He, a grandson of the Han ruler Wudi. Liu He was made an emperor in 74 BCE at the age of 18 but was dethroned within 27 days—a victim of the political struggle going on at the time—and sent back to his ancestral home as a commoner. The ruler who succeeded him rehabilitated Liu He, granting him a title, Marquis Haihun, and a large fief just a few years before Liu He’s death in 59 BCE at the age of 33. Many piles of pottery and precious stones, gold cakes and gold utensils, and bronze instruments and jade ornaments accompanied Marquis Haihun to his grave, but so also did the image and words of Confucius, which suggests that even in death this young nobleman chose to stay close to what had become his moral compass in life.

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The Confucian Vision for a Good Society

Nov 9, 2015

James Hsiung

New York University

Devin T. Stewart

Former Senior Fellow, Senior Program Director, and CNL Staff Adviser, Carnegie Council

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James Hsiung gives a clear and compelling explanation of Confucius' views on harmonious human relations and how societies should be run, discussing how his thought differs from Western philosophy. He also explains why and how Confucianism has finally been rehabilitated, after almost a century of ignominy.

Paper presented to the Carnegie Council's Global Ethics Fellows Fifth Annual Conference, "An Ethical Dialogue between Asia and the West: Philosophical Traditions, Moral Contentions, and the Future of US-Asia Relations." The Conference took place in New York City, October 20-23, 2015.

DEVIN STEWART: It is my pleasure to introduce today our keynote speaker for lunch. James Hsiung is professor of politics at New York University [NYU]. He came to us highly recommended to speak about Confucianism today. He is also author and editor of—is it more than 18 books?

JAMES HSIUNG: Twenty-four. Number twenty-three came out in May, 24 came out in August.

DEVIN STEWART: Congratulations. That is a big number. Twenty-four books, that might be a record in the audience here today.

He has written on Pacific-Asian international relations, U.S.-Asian relations, Chinese foreign policy, and international law. His current research interest is in sea power. At NYU he teaches comparative politics of China and Japan, international relations of Asia, international law, and international governance. The title of his talk today is "The Confucian Vision for a Good Society," which connects to the presenter just before you. One of the students was presenting on that very topic. We are very, very happy to have you, Professor.

Please welcome Professor Hsiung.

JAMES HSIUNG: Ladies and gentlemen, let me share with you a joke I just heard about the Chinese woman who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. There are two co-winners. The reason why there are two co-winners is because on the day it was announced, two very anxious people turned up and took the front seat. One was named William Campbell and the other named Satoshi Omura , a Japanese gentleman. When the representative from the committee said, "This year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Medical Science, her name is Tu Youyou." That is according to the Chinese order. The family name comes first. But if you turn it around, by the English order, it would be Youyou Tu. So the person announced, "The winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Medical Science is Youyou Tu." Therefore, there are two other co-winners.

That is a joke that I don't want to be selfish keeping to myself.

Confucian vision of a good society: Confucius lived in the sixth century BC. He was a communitarian moralist who believed in the original good of human nature, only subsequently warped or corrupted by influences in the social environment, including paucity and poverty. If you have two apples and two kids, they won't fight, but if I only have one apple and two kids, they are going to fight for that one apple. Therefore, paucity, scarcity, as well as poverty, can be one of the corrupting influences in society.

Confucius was born in an era of great chaos and instability. History books tell us that there were sons killing their parents and subordinate officials killing their kings. Confucius was very, very preoccupied with social order and orderliness. He was troubled by all that.

But his vision for a redeemed society was based on two tenets: one, that moral cultivation can restore the original good in human nature, and second, that a web of affect-laden—referring to affection—relationships be established in a society that is assimilated to a close-knit family.

I will just give you one example of what an affect-laden relationship can be. We can learn this from a story about one of his disciples , Zigong . He was away when the master passed away. When he came back, he not only planted a tree, as is usually done, but he built a hut for himself next to the master's grave, and he stayed in that hut, not for one year or two years, but three years in earnest mourning.

My son would not do that after I die.

To Confucius, order, like charity, begins at home. If people are filial to their parents, they are not likely to be anti-social, much less rebellious against society, nor disloyal to the monarch or the sovereign. The cultivated elites, known as junzi —exemplary individuals, known in Chinese as junzi —hold the key to a good society. Hence, a good vision for a great nation begins with personal cultivation, which begins with a moral refinement of the individual that, in turn, entails the restoration of human nature to its original good.

Thus, ultimately, education holds the key. But education is not what is being taught in school. Just as an individual never ceases to learn in his lifetime, society is a big school affording an unending process of moral redemption.

Like Socrates , Confucius treasured virtue and likewise believed that virtue can be taught and be ingrained in people's psyche. The difference is, for Confucius, virtue is reached through the restoration of the original good in human nature, and education is a restorative process unto itself. For Socrates, it was impossible, inconceivable to unify opposites. In contrast, Confucius emphasized the importance of harmonizing opposites. This has turned out to be a very unique aspect of Chinese culture. Later on I will come back to this point.

For Confucius, only the properly educated junzi , or exemplary persons, should be entrusted with the governance of society or the polity. The monarch, who should be subject to the same requirements of the moral dictate, should be assisted by these exemplary men, who came to be known as shidafu [scholar officials] in Chinese, or, in English, "litocrats," a combination of two words, "literary" and "bureaucrats," litocrats.

But where do these cultivated people come from? That was the origin of the celebrated Chinese Keju system, or a civil service examination system writ large. After Confucianism was officially adopted as the national teaching in 136 BC, during the Han dynasty , the Keju examination system was introduced on an experimental basis, and within a few decades, a plebian man named Gongsun Hong became the first commoner to rise through the Keju system to become the nation's prime minister.

Back in the first or second century BC, where else could you find an example to show that a plebian could rise up to the position of prime minister? This was very, very unusual, very, very unique.

Later the Keju system became regulated and more institutionalized in the Tang dynasty , sixth century to tenth century, and it produced the world's first civil service. This civil service part of the system—there was more than the civil service; that is why I said the civil service part of the system—was copied by the Ottoman Empire, and from there, it was introduced to England, and from England, it was brought to America. So our civil service system actually owes its origin to this system in China.

The most fundamental change brought on by the Confucianization of China was that knowledge superseded or replaced wealth as the criterion for social mobility. The state—that is, the government—became the certifying agent of social mobility through this Keju system. The downside of it was that it began a tradition of the state being larger than society, but the good part of it is that it ended hereditary nobility, or the passing on of power and privilege by heredity, with the only exception of the emperor's throne. But emperors may come and go. Members of the same class of Confucian litocrats continued to assist the rulers in the governance of the land, thus accounting for the 2,000-year-long China dynastic history. We may call that long stretch of time the first rise of China, having the world's largest GDP until 1840.

I might add that the state, or the government, in the Confucian vision has two peculiar functions not known in the West, except perhaps as seen, in part, in Plato 's philosopher-king. Plato's philosopher-king would be concerned with what music people listen to. That is Confucius' concern, too.

I said two peculiar functions unknown in the West. The first is to see that the people are duly morally armed against the decaying influences in society, and the second peculiar function is to participate in people's livelihood, to make sure that the people would enjoy the freedom from want, as well as from fear. Hence, the tradition of a state-led economy has persisted throughout Chinese history until today, just like the different concerns of the central banker as opposed to the individual consumer about falling prices. The central banker is always concerned that too deeply falling prices might trip off a deflation, whereas the consumer would love to see the prices fall and fall and fall.

The difference of the Confucian view of the state lies in its preoccupation with the nation's—not the individual's, the nation's—freedom from fear and want, not the individual's freedom of movement and speech. In addition to abetting the longevity of the Chinese dynastic history, the Confucian vision also contributed to the first rise of China as the greatest power on earth in terms of GDP, which was always larger than the combined total of Europe from year 1 AD to 1840 AD. After that, after the Opium War , China then went down. This is based on statistics gathered by the English economic historian, Angus Maddison . If you don't believe me, check it out with his books .

In the early 19th century, however, the West came en masse and imposed itself on China in various inroads and encroachments. They came at a time of a downward trend of dynastic cycle, when the Manchu dynastic house was saddled with a sevenfold population explosion and a series of severe internal revolts. After the fateful Opium War of 1840 , British opium grown in the Indian colony began to inundate and emasculate the Chinese nation. After that, China went under, until about three decades ago, when China began to rise again.

In modern times, many Chinese patriots tried to revive the China dream. Sun Yat-sen , who was trained as a surgeon in Hong Kong—so he was exposed to Western education—led a successful revolution that overthrew the last dynasty in China in 1911 and established the first republic in Chinese history. He tried to combine the glorious Chinese tradition with a modern democratic form of government, plus a state-led economy. But his vision and blueprint for national revival was first frustrated by the division of the warlords and thereafter derailed by the brutal aggression of the Japanese, whose invading forces imposed an eight-year war on China, sapping its strength.

Mao Zedong , in his own way, tried to co-opt the Marxist ideology from the West left in order to cope with the capitalistic and imperialistic West on the right. Although the Leninist organizational strategy helped Mao's revolution to succeed in capturing political power, the Marxist class struggle ill-fitted the Chinese cultural milieu. It ran head-on against a deeply ingrained Confucian notion of a harmonious society, thus dooming Mao's ambitions to revive China's past economic glory.

In the post-Mao period, however, Deng Xiaoping was able to succeed where Mao had failed, thanks to two very different approaches. One, Deng ended the class struggle and all Mao's political campaigns in its name, and two, he combined a marketized economy with socialism, making the two opposites work in synergy. Only the Chinese can do this, combine two opposites and make them work in synergy, recalling the Confucian teachings on the harmonization of opposites.

Here I might add a footnote. Max Weber thought Confucius' emphasis on harmony was a woe for the Chinese, because, in his mind, you have to be able to compete in order to have good economic development. But Max Weber did not know Chinese. The Chinese word "He" means not only harmony, but harmonization of opposites. There is a big difference. This points to the importance that you have to study Chinese in order to understand China. Even Max Weber made this big mistake, because he didn't know Chinese.

In the year 2005, Hu Jintao , the then-secretary of the Communist Party in China, was the first communist leader to broach the idea of establishing a harmonious society, no more class struggle. But they didn't say this officially. They just said, "We want to build a harmonious society." The current head of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping , is banking his China dream on the ideal of the harmonious society, as first enunciated by Confucius in his salutation to the Society of Great Harmony. In fact, Xi Jinping has professed harmonious society as one of his primary goals for China by 2049. Why 2049? Because that is the centennial of the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.

So the Confucian vision of a good society remains alive, even under the communist regime in China. Confucius is reputed to be a man of all seasons and of all eras. This is proof that he is such a person.

I thank you.

QUESTION: Professor, thank you so much for your remarks. You covered a huge swath of history in a very short amount of time, and you did it eloquently, which is very difficult to do. So I congratulate you on that.

The current president of China, Xi Jinping, has said that it is best to look at China's 60 years under the Communist Party with more continuity than we have. We have constantly heard about reform and opening up, splitting the 60 years of Communist Party rule between the 30 years under Mao Zedong and then after, the Deng Xiaoping era. Communist Party officials and many people in China always talk about this gaige kaifang yihou [after reform and opening up] this concept. But Xi Jinping has said that this is a flawed concept, that there is more continuity than we often give credit to.

I wonder if you can try to help us to better understand both the continuities and discontinuities between the first 30 years of Communist Party rule and the second 30 years.

JAMES HSIUNG: What Xi Jinping is trying to do, I think, is to dissociate himself from Mao. At the very beginning when he was selected as the secretary-general of the Communist Party, a lot of people, both in China and in America, thought that he was another Mao Zedong. So he subtly but deliberately put a distance between himself and Mao. So whatever Mao was doing, despite what he was doing, there was continuity, in order to justify why under Xi China has to return to its past glory. He has to emphasize the continuity, the cultural continuity. That is my first answer.

My second answer—rather, I can add on to what I just said. Despite the changes that came with Mao Zedong, there was continuity, cultural continuity, that you cannot see, like the respect children had for their parents and the importance of guanxi . That came from the past, especially guanxi among the people related to you. That they could never do away with, despite Mao's effort.

Another thing, though, is that despite Mao's bad reputation, both at home today and abroad, he never denounced Confucius by name. It was his lieutenants who did that. Pi Lin fan Kong [Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius campaign]—actually, it is pi Lin fan Zhou Enlai . Kong [Confucius] became a substitute for Zhou En-Lai. If Mao had denounced Kong by name, Confucius would never be able to come back.

This leads me to the next point. In 1995, when the party was under Jiang Zemin 's general secretaryship, the Communist Party, for the first time, celebrated and commemorated Confucius' birthday. After that, Confucius returned home through the front door, not through the back door. So today Xi Jinping could say, "We want to go back to our previous glory," meaning that you have to learn Confucian culture. Even there was a book quoting Xi Jinping. He didn't write it. There was a book teaching people how to read Confucius. After 1995, lunyu , the Analects of Confucius, is taught from the first grade up.

When I was visiting China—usually I would be out during the day, but that day I had to come back to get something in the afternoon. I turned on the TV, and there a professor was expounding Confucian teachings on television, CCTV 4. This is amazing. Confucian influence is gradually coming back to replace Marxism. As I said a while ago, they don't say "no more Marxism." They say "harmonious society," which means there is no more class struggle. If there is no more class struggle, there is no more Marxism. You have to read between the lines.

QUESTION: My name is Mori, from Japan.

If I understand correctly, I think a Western theologian, Hans Küng , categorized global ethics into four kinds of groupings. Liberal ethics assumes individual rights, individual responsibility, whereas communitarianism assumes collective rights, collective responsibility. Marxism, he argues, is collective responsibility, individual rights. He argued that the Confucius ethics assumes that leaders'—you said philosopher-kings'—individual responsibility and people's, communities' collective rights.

Do you think this is correct? That is the first question. And if this is the correct categorization, do you think that Deng Xiaoping's harmonizations are successfully transformed from Marxist ethics into Confucian ethics, with individual leaders' responsibility, while retaining people's collective rights?

JAMES HSIUNG: I think you seem to have made too much of a distinction between individualism and collective rights. As I said already, to Confucius, he was more concerned with the nation's, or collective, freedoms than the individual freedoms. A Chinese saying is, if the animal's hide is no more, where will the hair be? The hair will come out first. The hair has to be with the skin. Without the skin, there can be no hair. Without collective, there can be no individual. So it is collective rights and collective responsibility.

In the West, we talk about man in society, man as an individual, as if separable from society. But in the Chinese view, we have to talk about man in society, because once a man is removed from society, he cannot exist. Without the nation becoming rich, no individual can be rich or be well taken care of. This is China's view. That is why I emphasized that Confucius was more concerned with the nation's freedom rather than the individual's freedom.

Responsibilities, too. You cannot hold one individual responsible. Rather, responsibility can be shared and should be shared among all individuals. I don't know if I answered your question.

QUESTIONER: You emphasized that leaders' responsibility . . .

JAMES HSIUNG: There is this unsaid part of the Chinese view on governance. In the West, you believe all individuals are equal. Anyone can run for president. That is why you have 12 contenders in the Republican Party . Anybody can run for president. But in the Chinese culture, we assume that there is a clear division of labor. There are people who are attuned to leadership and there are people who have to follow the leaders. You may consider this sacrilegious—how can you say that? Sun Yat-sen, for example, classified people into eight categories: sage, lesser sage, talented, intelligent, ordinary, subordinary, stupid, and wicked. Those are his eight classifications. You classify people into these eight categories. Not everybody can lead. That is a very, very distinct difference between Chinese culture and Western culture. In the West, you assume everybody is equal.

In fact, a Korean American professor did a study between the Chinese system, the tribute system, and the Western Westphalian system of international relations. He found two differences. One is very appropriate for this discussion.

He said the two differences are: In the Westphalian system there were more wars than in the Chinese tribute system. In the five centuries he studied in the Chinese tribute system, there were only two wars, one of which was started by the Japanese. The other was started by the Chinese.

The second difference between the two systems was that, whereas in the Westphalian system, the Western system, states are nominally equal, but, in fact, they are not equal—the more powerful countries are more equal than the others—whereas in the Chinese system, they were all equal . Nominal equality, that is in the West, and the factual equality is something else. But the Chinese never talk about equality, because they assume there is a difference.

Mencius even said those who labor with their brains are destined to lead and those who work with their brawn, the muscles, are to be led. For that, he was criticized by the Communists, because the Communists have adopted the Western— Marx was a Westerner. Marxism is a Western ideology. So they criticized Mencius for doing that. But they no longer do that.

DEVIN STEWART: I have a lot of questions. A lot of the things that you have been saying are uniquely Chinese are found throughout the world. You were just saying the person who labors with his or her mind is more of a leader than someone with strength. The Ancient Greeks said the same thing, Plato and Aristotle and Socrates. Synthesizing opposites is found in ancient Indian logic, Nagarjuna , as well as Hegelian dialectic . What is uniquely Chinese about these things that are found throughout the world?

JAMES HSIUNG: The uniqueness is that the Chinese believe that you can make opposites work together in unison and in synergy, so that one plus one is equal to more than two.

DEVIN STEWART: But what is the difference between that and Hegelian synthesis, for example?

JAMES HSIUNG: Hegelian synthesis is antithesis-synthesis. You go to a next higher plateau. But the Chinese view of history is a cycle going horizontal. This is one of the reasons why Chinese Communism, including Mao Zedong, was so enamored by Marxism. Marxism has inherent Hegelian dialectics. But that is not making opposites work. It is still Western thinking, going upward. From conflict, you arrive at a higher plateau of things. That is not to make opposites work for you.

Socrates, for example, did not believe that you could make opposites work. What is small? Small comes from big, when bigness reduces until it becomes small. Therefore you cannot logically, according to him, make opposites work, because opposites are actually on two sides of the same thing.

DEVIN STEWART: Confucius was able to describe or to bring forth a moral system, a system of ethics. Do you think that what he was doing was describing what he saw and describing what worked, or was he more prescribing? What do you think? Was it both?

JAMES HSIUNG: No, no. He was born into an era of great chaos. Therefore, he wanted to teach his disciples what they can do to improve society. He was a teacher. He was not an [inaudible] writer. He was a teacher trying to teach people to redeem themselves. If everybody redeemed himself or herself, then you would have a redeemed society.

Going back to something I said before about original goodness in human nature, the Analects was a compilation, a collection of footnotes taken by his disciples. Mencius wrote the book the Mencius [a collection of anecdotes and conversations from both Confucius and Mencius] . It was up to Mencius to spell out what was potentially in Confucius' mind. Different people interpret Confucius differently. Yan Xing , for example, believed human nature is bad. Yan Xing also was one of his disciples.

But Mencius represented the mainstream of Confucian thinking. This is the way he explained human nature, original good in human nature. He said, here is a man who sees a child about to fall into a well. If the child falls into the well, he will surely fall to certain death in the water. This man would rush to his rescue. When he does this, he is not thinking, "I'm doing his parents a favor," nor is he doing this to make himself a big hero in the community, nor because he doesn't like the child crying. He just does this out of the good nature in him.

That may be too bookish, too idealistic, until five years ago, 2007, something really happened in the New York subway system. A black man , a Navy veteran, was with his two daughters, aged two and four. On the platform, he saw a man falling from the platform. Then he saw the lights of a train coming. Without thinking, he jumped down to the tracks, pressed this guy down, and there was only one foot or so above the head. Before the train could screech to a stop, it was already the fifth car above his head. The people were screaming on the platform. It was only then he thought of his daughters. He said, "Will somebody please tell my daughters Daddy is okay down here?" If he thought of his daughters, he would not have jumped. But in that split second of life or death, he jumped to the rescue of someone, even at the risk of his own life.

That proved Mencius' point. This shows your original good, the original goodness of human nature.

I was expecting somebody would raise that question, but since nobody raised the question, I volunteered.

QUESTION: As I take it, one of the basic, perhaps founding premises of Confucian teaching, Confucian philosophy, is that when a person acts, he or she never acts alone. I take that idea to be so important, especially in today's world, when we see the havoc wreaked by this Western possessive individualism. In that context, we see the relevance of this Confucian idea of interaction and interconnectivity, especially now that we are living in a global world and now that also we have to know the impact of our actions vis-à-vis the environment and what it is doing to us and to everybody else.

In that context, would you like to comment on some of the modern relevance of Confucianism? I would be most interested to hear that from you—some of the contemporary relevance of Confucian ideas.

JAMES HSIUNG: It is very easy. Why Confucius was welcomed back today, is because there is so much widespread corruption. Yes, you could deal with corruption by killing everyone. But what is there to prevent future occurrences of corruption? This is why Confucius was welcomed back. You have to teach people to find their original good so that they will be incorruptible in the future. That is what makes Confucius' teaching relevant for today, even in Communist China.

I don't know if that is what you were asking for.

QUESTION: I think one of the big topics from a philosophical perspective in the 20th century is that after the Western world experiencing the First World War and the Second World War , and then the philosophers' reflection about all these disasters, we have to consider and then discover the presence of the other. The presence of the other is huge, from my perspective, along the concept of difference. At least from a philosophical perspective, that was a big theme and topic.

My question is, I believe that Confucius mentions that you have to love your parents and your loved ones. There is kind of a circle. There is a very close circle you are supposed to love and care about. Then his concept of ren , the humanness, is enlarging the circle so that you can just incorporate others.

But at least from Mencius's perspective, he was kind of categorizing some relationships, like the father, parents, wife and husband, brothers, king and vassals and things like that.

My genuine question is, what is the Confucian concept of the ethics of the other or the strangers and refugees? What is the Confucian contribution to the question of the other on a global scale?

JAMES HSIUNG: Are you talking about the other-directedness?

QUESTIONER: The other in the sense of the one you are not—the strangers.

JAMES HSIUNG: There is a difference between the other-directedness talked about by American sociologists and the other-directedness in Confucian thinking. Confucius assumed that you should not just take care of yourself. Many societies—there is a group. You have to take care of your group first. Of course, Confucius, unlike Jesus —Jesus, I think, by comparison, was too idealistic. He said you have to love everybody the same way. But Confucius did not say that. Therefore, everything follows a line of diminishing returns.

You love your parents first, and your brothers and your elders. But there is a limit to how much you can extend your love. Of course, you cannot say you love a stranger as much as you love your parents. Jesus did not make that differentiation, but Confucius did. So Confucius, I think, was being more realistic, because he was not an evangelist.

QUESTIONER: The world is being more globalized and society is more likely interconnected. The encounter of the other is, I think, from a global ethics perspective, a fundamental issue. How do we build a relationship with the other, the strangers? How do we incorporate them into our circle so that we can make a better society, as a humane goal? At the end of the day, if you are loving your parents and your loved ones, you are not infinite. Sometimes you are more [inaudible]. That is why, at the end of the day, the other is always marginalized. That is why I am asking again, what is the Confucian contribution in terms of making our world more humane at the end of the day? That is my concern.

JAMES HSIUNG: I might add that under Mao there was an attempt to move from kinship to comradeship. Comradeship would be a much larger concept than kinship. Yes, there was such an attempt, but it didn't go very far, because this is basically human nature. You love your parents more than other people.

QUESTION: I will just continue from this discussion. Where is the concept of justice in that sense? If you love your parents more than others, you can be unjust towards other people by loving your parents. Also in terms of corruption, nepotism is a very widespread type of corruption in many countries, because of the thinking, "Okay, I love my parents, I love my cousins, I love my kinship more than others, and therefore they can get the employment," or whatever benefits. How does that fit into the thinking, social justice and corruption?

JAMES HSIUNG: But don't push this too far. You love your parents, your kin and siblings and so on. It doesn't mean you have to violate the law to do that. You have to balance that, too.

Confucius saw the world as following an extension of concentric circles. It goes from you to the next circle, to the next circle, until there is a line of no return. You stop somewhere. You cannot possibly love everybody. It doesn't mean that you have to steal to show your love.

To show you the influence of Confucianism in Japanese law before—I don't know about now—in Japanese law, if you kill a stranger, you would not be punished as severely as if you killed your uncle, because your uncle is closer to you than a stranger.

Is it still true?

PARTICIPANT: Yes.

JAMES HSIUNG: That is Confucian influence. It doesn't mean you have to rob somebody in order to show your love to your parents.

Let me extend that point. As I said, there are downsides and upsides in Confucianism. This is a downside. If you are a student of Chinese history, you will discover the "empress dowager's syndrome." You don't find that in any other country. In England, she would be called "queen mother," but in China it is always emperor, so empress dowager, the empress mother.

An emperor, when he became emperor, his father had died already, but the mother may be remaining. But oftentimes the mother of the emperor would meddle in politics. Oftentimes, when officials disagreed with the emperor, they would go to the empress dowager to complain, and the empress dowager may call in the emperor and say, "You did something wrong. You had better change it." This happened very often.

You don't find this in any country's history, because of Confucius's emphasis on filial piety.

Viewing this from a political science perspective, it was in the empress's interest to propagandize or publicize or emphasize the importance of filial piety. Why? Because if all children listen to their parents, then you don't have rebels. The parents would divide your job of ruling the country. However, there is the obverse side. If the emperor emphasized filial piety, then you have to show you are filial, too. Therefore, you have to show you are filial to your mother. That ushered in the frequent intervention of the empress dowager.

So there are good sides and bad sides, too. I don't want to give you just one lopsided view.

QUESTION: Thank you so much for your insightful talk. I have been citing you for my first book. I wrote a book about human rights, its course in North Korea, Confucianism, post-colonialism, Marxist perspective.

JAMES HSIUNG: You are talking about that tiny little volume on Asian human rights.

QUESTIONER: Yes, I have been using your work a lot. I have two questions, very simple ones.

What is the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party] take on Taoism ? We talked about Confucianism a lot. Has the CCP been using Taoist aspects of Chinese philosophy in their propaganda?

My second question is, the CCP also has been building a lot of Confucius Institutes and Confucian monuments along the Silk Road. Do you think it is going to work?

JAMES HSIUNG: First question, Taoism did not offer any threat to Communism. Confucianism may offer a threat, because you should pay your loyalty to your parents first. What about the Communist Party? From the Communist Party, you should pay your loyalty to the Communist Party first, not your parents. Mao did not say this, but Guo Moruo did: "I don't love my parents. I love Stalin more than I love my parents," and so on. But Mao never said that.

So there is a competition. Communism is like a religion. In fact, the Communist Party, if you are carefully looking at it, is structured the same way as the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has one Bible , which in this way, you have Marxism . One pope, a chairman, or secretary-general of the party. Cardinals, and you have the Politburo members. Congregation, and you have the Communist membership.

I said I was a genius when I discovered that. I was disappointed to find that somebody else already said it 20 years before I did.

Confucius Institutes: Unfortunately—I think it is a good idea—there are 200-something, nearly 300 institutes in the world, all initiated by the Hanban in Beijing. But the only thing is, they teach Chinese language only. You cannot blame them. Where do you find the people qualified to teach Confucian culture? Confucian culture has been neglected until after 1995. So there is a problem of finding enough people who can teach more than just the language. That is one problem.

Second is the name of Confucius. In the West, as well as in pre-Communist China, China on the eve of Communist takeover, Confucius got a bad name. In the West, Confucianism is equated with autocracy, autocratic rule. And in China, Confucianism during the 20th century meant doing nothing.

But, in fact, there was a reason why Confucius got this bei heiguo yinzhang [scapegoated, stamped with a bad name] in Chinese—why Confucius got this stigma, this bad name. In the mid-19th century, a rebellion known as the Taiping Rebellion almost succeeded in overthrowing the Manchu dynasty. The Manchu dynasty discovered that all the baqi jun , the Eight Banner troops that the Manchus came to China with, had proven ineffective in fighting the Taiping Rebellion. Therefore, the empress dowager at the time turned mainly to two essential officials, Li Hongzhang , asking him to go back to his native Anhui province to train the Anhui army, and Zeng Guofan to go back to his native Hunan to train the Xiangjun or Hunan army. That was the beginning of the modern-day private army institution. With these private armies, these officials were able to put down the Taiping Rebellion.

Why would Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan choose to side with the Manchu court—the Manchus came in as aliens—against the Taipings, who were Han Chinese? The empress dowager then came to the wrong conclusion. She thought that these officials, Han Chinese officials, were Confucianists and they wanted to suppress the Taiping Rebellion because the Taiping leaders were against Confucius, and they wanted to fight for us because we were for Confucius. That is the first conclusion.

The second conclusion was, so long as we hang on to—pull on Confucius' feet, then we will be safe. Then all these Han officials will support us. So in her mind, doing nothing would be like revering Confucius in that she would command the loyalty of all the Han Chinese people. But that was the wrong conclusion.

Ever since then, though, it helped create an impression that Confucius wants you to do nothing. Therefore, if we want to save China, we have to knock down Confucius. This prompted Hu Shih , among others, to say "Dadao Kong jiadian ," knock down the temple of Confucius.

But that was wrong. Confucius got that stigma wrongly, erroneously. I am glad today the Communist leaders have seen the wisdom to bring him back.

DEVIN STEWART: Thank you so much, Professor. Everybody, join me in thanking the professor. [Applause]

JAMES HSIUNG: Thank you. [He claps back.] That is the Chinese way. When somebody claps, you—mainly the Chinese have learned it from the Soviets. I visited the Soviet Union and I found out when somebody applauds you, you applaud yourself. That is the Soviet way, and the Chinese Communists have learned from the Soviets.

But this is the typical Chinese way [he clasps both hands in front of his chest.] This means, I thank you. I thank you for your applause. Learn it.

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32 Confucianism and Literature

Michael A. Fuller is Professor Emeritus of Classical Chinese Literature and Thought at the University of California, Irvine. His two most recent books are An Introduction to Chinese Poetry (Harvard University Asian Center Press, 2017) and Drifting among Rivers and Lakes: Southern Song Dynasty Poetry and the Problem of Literary History (Harvard University Asian Center Press, 2013).

Martin W. Huang is Professor of East Asian Studies in the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. His specialty is literature and gender in late imperial China. His most recent book is Intimate Memory: Gender and Mourning in Late Imperial China (SUNY, 2018).

• Published: 26 January 2023
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Throughout the premodern era, the Confucian governance based on a civil ( wen 文) ordering of society required ritual and official writing that imparted to wenzhang 文章 (literature) a moral and political seriousness while the humaneness central to Confucian thought also required that writing engage the serious realities of human experience. These core commitments did not change, but the philosophical basis grounding the Confucian order grew more complex, and the literary forms through which writers explored human experience evolved to meet these shifts in the Confucian worldview. During the late imperial period, the complicated relationship between literature and examination culture in particular had a profound impact on the life of almost every educated man in late imperial China.

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Confucianism in Chinese Society in the First Two Decades of the 21st Century

The Cambridge History of Confucianism, ed. Kiri Paramore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

This chapter will be published in the forthcoming Cambridge History of Confucianism edited by Kiri Paramore (forthcoming 2022 or 2023). This ahead of print version has been uploaded on Academia.edu with the authorization of the publisher.

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Despite representing one of the largest economies on the world arena, China has been facing numbers of social and political problems on the domestic front. Issues, such as human rights violations, corruption and inequality, remain to be major public concerns for the country. Currently, China is ranked 84th in the World Happiness Report that measures the level of well-being in a country based on GDP per capita, freedom, life expectancy, etc. This reasonably demonstrates the general social climate in China that has been frequently set as an agenda for public discourse. Such social unrest in the country is often attributed to the post-Mao moral crisis. In this essay, I will first look at the historical processes that inhibited the spiritual development of the Chinese populations. Afterwards, I will move on to discuss the relevance of Confucianism in the modern China by arguing that its ideology, to a certain extent, can act as a moral platform for the Chinese community, and thereby, help it to overcome the threat of moral degeneration.

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121 Confucianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best confucianism topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 most interesting confucianism topics to write about, 📌 simple & easy confucianism essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on confucianism, ❓ confucianism discussion questions.

• Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism Elements Hindus, the last power is discovered in the Vedas and the writing of the religious leaders willing to view the fact nature of reality.
• Differences Between Confucianism and Daoism For this reason, all men in the society are required to assist the authorities in the administration of the state. To a Confucian, the state is the guardian of every individual, and should be protected.
• Confucianism and Women During the Tang Dynasty His teachings were focused on the ability to ritualize life; one of the main focuses of those teachings was that the majority of the problems in society were the result of individuals forgetting their proper […]
• Confucianism and Daoism Influence on Zen Buddhism The concept of “emptiness” and “nothingness” is often mentioned and discussed in Zen philosophy. Together with the concept of ephemerality, Zen and Daoism explain that reality is conceived rather than seen.
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• Distribution Features of Confucianism and Buddhism Confucianism is more a philosophical doctrine than a religion, and its connection with the East is strong due to the specifics of the Asian mentality.
• Hsun Tsu “Human Nature Is Evil”: The Human Nature According to Confucianism Despite this view of the writer he receives opposition from the Mencious view of the human nature who argues that if at all a man saw a child at the verge of falling over a […]
• Chinese Religions: Confucianism and Daoism Reading the Book of Changes, generally known as the Yijing, which is considered to be the first manifestation of the Chinese religious worldview, is one of the rituals.
• Animism, Shinto, Dao, and Confucianism Yin and Yang represent the primordial play of opposites in life and the world known as the Dao. In one way or another, Yin and Yang are present in all religious movements in China; the […]
• Chinese Religion and Philosophy: Yin and Yang, Shintoism, Taoism, and Confucianism Taoism is based on self-discovery, change, and the absence of restrictions, and Yin and Yang are the epitomai of change and alteration.
• Philosophical Teachings of Stoicism and Confucianism Firstly, speaking about the principal contrasts between Stoicism and Confucianism, it should be mentioned that Confucius developed the teaching aimed at the improvement of the state structure, whereas the Stoics pay the main attention to […]
• Discussing Ethical Perspectives: Business and Confucianism Rowley and Oh go further in the investigation of Confucian paternalism in Chinese management and find out that business ethics could use the Confucian idea of “love”.
• Tokugawa Period: Confucianism as an Integral Part or the Culture This was not the first introduction of Confucianism to Japan – Confucian studies had of course been pursued in Japan since the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.at the latest – but never before had the […]
• Confucianism: Its Components and Relation to the Society The primary concern of Confucius is the misery and the distress prevailing in the society because of the immorality of its people.
• Wisdom in Judaism and Confucianism Judaism is a religion based on the relationship between God and man and to the Jewish wisdom means having insightful knowledge of the relationship between oneself and God.
• World Religions: Confucianism and Buddhism Birth as the first stage of human life is supported by rituals that have to protect the woman and her child.
• Buddhism and Confucianism in Modern China In the article “Concepts and Institutions for a New Buddhist Education: Reforming the Sa gha between and within State Agencies,” Stefania Travagnin discusses the opposition between Buddhist education and Western education in China the beginning […]
• Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty: Metaphysics Focus To be a human meant to occupy a proper place in the society and to be a member of the system. Neo-Confucians taught people to understand the material world around them and be an integral […]
• Confucianism and Its Role in the Chinese Culture In this case, the Confucianism philosophy holds that the father must remain in charge of both the moral and academic education of the son.
• Confucianism and Daoism Comparison One of the chief concepts of Daoism is the need to follow a way of nature as opposed to following a social or societal order. Therefore, the frog that is in a well is in […]
• Asian Confucianism Philosophy and Literature Nonetheless, Confucianism is still present in Asian people’s minds and in their literary works as their philosophy, affected by different intrusions, is rooted in their hearts in the form of genetic memory.
• Confucianism and Legalism in the Qin Dynasty In the modern era, the ethical lessons that form the framework of Confucianism continue to influence the mindsets and conducts of billions of people in the world.
• Confucianism and Government: Chinese Political System It is important to analyze the way Confucianism appeared as the political doctrine to understand the way it affects the contemporary Chinese society.
• Daoism, Legalism and Confucianism’ Philosophical Theories This paper discusses how both Daoism and Legalism differ from Confucianism on the issues of family, human nature, education, role of ruler, role of government, and role of individual.
• Confucianism as a Lifestyle: Philosophy and Principles It is the duty of elders to teach the young and it is the duty of the young to learn from elders.
• World Religions: Confucianism and Its Influence Ren is one of the key concepts of Confucianism; it is the ultimate responsibility of selflessness and humaneness for persons within society.
• Zhuang Zi’s Theory: Daoism and Confucianism However, Zhuang Zi argues that there is a point known as a privileged point of view and it is the most ideal for all observers to take.
• Analysis of Confucianism in The Analects by Yao 3 The readings helped me to obtain certain understanding of what Confucianism is and what the major principles of the tradition are.
• How Confucianism as the Asian American Heritage Has Been Maintained in Asian American Families The Confucian philosophy uses the concepts of training and control and love in the Chinese parenting practices, such that they are deeply involved in the lives of their children.
• Confucianism as the Foundation of the Present Chinese Culture As the most influential figure in the Chinese history, the way that the Chinese people live today is closely interrelated to the incredible teachings of Confucius.
• Confucianism Ideology and Its Usefulness The thesis statement of the discussion is that Confucianism is useful in cultivating and instilling good morals in individuals and in so doing contributes to harmonious co-existence of people in society.
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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Confucianism — The Significance of the Concepts of Confucianism

The Significance of The Concepts of Confucianism

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Article contents

Confucianism and education.

• Charlene Tan Charlene Tan Nanyang Technological University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.226
• Published online: 20 November 2017

Issues related to the aim of education, curriculum, teaching, and learning are perennial concerns in Confucianism. Within the Confucian canon, two texts, Analects ( Lunyu ) and Xueji ( Record of Learning ), are particularly instructive in illuminating the principles and practices of education for early Confucianism. Accordingly, the aim of education is to inculcate ren (humanity) through li (normative behaviors) so that learners can realize and broaden dao (Way). To achieve this aim, the curriculum should be holistic, broad-based, and integrated; students should constantly practice what they have learned through self-cultivation and social interaction. Supporting the curriculum is learner-focused education, where the teacher is sensitive to the individual needs of students. The “enlightening approach” is recommended, where the teacher encourages and guides students using the questioning technique and peer learning. The impact of Confucian education is evident in the creation and flourishing of “Confucian pedagogic cultures” in East Asia. However, a key question confronting a Confucian conception of education is whether such a paradigm is able to nurture critical and creative thinkers who are empowered to critique prevailing worldviews and effect social changes. A textual analysis of Xueji and Analects reveals that critical and creative thinking are valued and indispensable in Confucian education. Confucius himself chastised the rulers of his time, modified certain social practices, and ingeniously redefined terms that were in wide circulation such as li and junzi by adding novel elements to them. Confucian education should be viewed as an open tradition that learns from all sources and evolves with changing times. Such a tradition fulfills the educational vision to appropriate and extend dao , thereby continuing the educational project started by Confucius.

• Confucianism
• educational philosophy

Introduction

Confucianism comprises a rich tapestry of historical, political, philosophical and socio-cultural traditions that originated from Confucius ( Kong Fuzi ) ( 551–479 bce ). A prominent theme in Confucianism is education. Confucius himself devoted his whole life to teaching his disciples and persuading the political leaders of his time to enact his educational ideals. The intellectual tradition in education in Confucianism is exemplified in the Confucian canon known as the Four Books and Five Classics ( sishu wujing ). Within the canon, two texts stand out for their exposition on teaching and learning: Analects ( Lunyu ) and Xueji ( Record of Learning ). Analects , which is one of the Four Books, is a collection of the sayings and conduct of Confucius and his disciples. The process of collating Confucius’ teachings started shortly after his death in the form of little “books,” culminating in what we know today as Analects (Ames & Rosemont, 1998 ). Xueji is a chapter from Liji (Book of Rites) that is one of the Five Classics. It was probably written during the Warring States period ( 475–221 bce ) or the Han dynasty ( 202 bce –220 ce ) (Di et al., 2016 ). By the time of Xueji , an educational system comprising schools in the villages and a national academy in the capital already existed. Although Xueji was written specifically for students preparing for official positions, the educational principles discussed are applicable to all learners and reflect the essence of Confucian education.

Drawing on Analects and Xueji , this essay introduces a Confucian conception of education in terms of its aim of education, curriculum, teaching approaches, and contemporary relevance. All the English translations of the Confucian texts cited in this article were done by the author, unless otherwise stated. Efforts have been taken to preserve the original meaning and word pattern as much as possible. Any additions to the translation for the purpose of clarification are marked by square brackets (for the complete text of Analects in classical Chinese and English, see Lau, 1979 ; Ames & Rosemont, 1998 ; Slingerland, 2003 ; Chinese Text Project, 2016a ; for the complete text of Xueji in classical Chinese and English, see Legge, 1885 ; Wong, 1976 ; Di et al., 2016 ; Chinese Text Project, 2016b ).

Aim of Education

The central place of education in Confucianism is stated in the opening passage of Xueji :

If a ruler desires to transform the people [and] perfect [their] customs, [the ruler] can only do so through education! ( Xueji I).

The context of the passage is about good political governance. Rather than merely relying on laws, able officials, or virtuous advisors—all good measures in themselves—the ruler should devote attention to educating the people. The goal is to radically change the people by refining their conventional ways of thinking and doing. The reference to transformation and perfection in the above verse signifies that the scope is extensive, going beyond skills training and cognitive advancement to paradigm shift and character development. The actualization of this aim of education naturally requires a normative standard to guide the ruler in knowing whether and when the people have been transformed and their customs perfected. This standard is revealed in Xueji II to be dao (Way), which is the object of learning: “People who do not learn will not realize dao .” Dao is the Way of Heaven ( tian ) or “guiding discourse” (Hansen, 1989 ) that is passed down from antiquity. To realize dao is to understand and experience the “vision of human excellence” (Cua, 1989 ) that forms the basis for human transformation and cultural perfection. As the normative tradition inherited from one’s cultural predecessors, dao contributes to the formation of Confucian ideals and symbolic resources such as texts, cultural artifacts, and ceremonies (Chan, 2000 ). Dao was modeled and propagated by sage-kings such as Yao, Shun, and Yu of the first three dynasties of China ( Analects 8.18, 8.19, 8.20, 8.21). Among the first three dynasties, the Zhou dynasty ( 1100–221 bce ) is singled out by Confucius as embodying dao through its cultural elements, such as the exemplary conduct of its rulers, institutions, and rituals ( Analects 9.5).

Dao , while not lost and still accessible to all, is acquired through learning. As stated in Xueji III, “Although the ultimate dao is present, [one] does not know [its] goodness if [one] does not learn it.” That is why Confucius declares that “the junzi (noble or exemplary person) learns for the sake of dao ” ( Analects 19.7). Confucius also exhorts all to “be firmly committed to love learning [and] hold fast to the good dao till death” ( Analects 19.7). Not only are human beings called to realize dao , they are also entrusted with the mission to extend it. In the words of Confucius, “It is human beings who are able to broaden dao , not dao that broadens human beings” ( Analects 15.29). To broaden dao is to share in, contribute to, and advance the best of the spiritual, social, political, intellectual, and moral capital and practices derived from one’s cultural tradition.

But how do we know whether and when a person is realizing and broadening dao ? According to Confucius, such a person aspires to do all things in accordance with li (normative behaviors). Confucius underscores the pervasiveness of li as follows:

Do not look unless [it is in accordance with] li ; do not listen unless [it is in accordance with] li ; do not speak unless [it is in accordance with] li ; do not move unless [it is in accordance with] li . ( Analects 12.1)

Li covers all normative human behaviors that stem from and are accompanied by desirable values, attitudes, and dispositions (Tan, 2013 ). To realize and broaden dao is to think, feel, and act in accordance with li . Put another way, the pattern of li is the internal structure of dao (Hall & Ames, 1987 ). Given that li concerns all aspects of human life, individuals need to constantly turn to the guiding discourse in dao to act normatively in specific problem-situations. Instances of li recorded in Analects include offering appropriate greeting (3.7), sitting (10.12), eating (10.10), and even sleeping (10.24). In the context of education, li is manifested in all learning activities, such as establishing one’s aspiration in learning, analyzing texts, asking questions, and making friends (this will be elaborated on in a later section). It is significant that Confucius’ message to political rulers regarding li in Analects 2:3 corroborates the teaching in Xueji I on the importance of education. Confucius advises rulers not to govern the people through harsh laws and punishment. Instead, rulers should “keep [the masses] in line through li and [they] will have a sense of shame and order themselves” ( Analects 2.3). Rule by law and punitive measures can, at best, change the people’s outward behavior but not their mindsets and moral character. In contrast, directing the people to adhere to li is more effective, as it transforms not just their conduct but also their value systems. The transformative power of li follows logically from its integration of praiseworthy values, attitudes, dispositions, and actions that originate from dao . When people know and desire to act in accordance with li , they will naturally discipline themselves and be ashamed once their behavior deviates from li .

It is necessary, in order to further understand li , to introduce another cardinal Confucian concept: ren (humanity or benevolence). Ren defines the normativity of li in the sense that to observe li is to possess and demonstrate ren in all our thoughts, feelings, and actions (Tan, 2013 ). Confucius links li to ren by asking rhetorically: “What has a person who is not ren got to do with li ”? ( Analects 3.3). Confucius also asserts that “restraining the self and returning to li is ren ” ( Analects 12.1). To restrain oneself is to control one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions so that one does not stray from the right path of dao . Ren is the overarching and general quality that encompasses all virtues such as reverence, sincerity, empathy, tolerance, trustworthiness, diligence, and generosity (see Analects 12.1, 17.6). Xueji is replete with references to different facets of ren such as respect, love, humility, and diligence. Everyone has the potential to attain ren , as pointed out by Confucius: “Being ren lies with oneself; how could it come from others?” ( Analects 12.1). So quintessential is ren that Confucius contends that “the common people need ren more than water and fire” ( Analects 15.35) and that a ren person is prepared to “give up [one’s] life to achieve ren ” ( Analects 15.9). Putting together what we have learned from this section, the purpose of education is for learners to realize and broaden dao by internalizing and demonstrating ren -centered li at all times. Only then can the ruler succeed in transforming the learners and perfecting their customs ( Xueji I).

“Curriculum,” as used in this article, refers to the totality of learning experiences provided to students. This means that the curriculum includes not just the contents to be studied but also all planned activities, programs, events, and functions that take place in a variety of learning sites. Following the aim of education to realize and broaden dao through embracing ren -centered li , a Confucian curriculum should be holistic, broad-based, and integrated. First, the curriculum is holistic , as the spotlight is not just on the students’ cognitive progress but also on their affective and behavioral developments. Cognitively, the curriculum is designed to enrich the learner’s intellect (“broaden their learning”) and content mastery (“know their various subjects and acquire a general understanding”) ( Xueji V). As for the affective and behavioral dimensions of the curriculum, the same passage stresses the need for students to “revere their studies,” “esteem their fellow students,” “cherish their teachers,” “be firmly set and not likely to regress” in their learning, and engage in “discourses on their studies” with their teacher and peers. Other passages also highlight a commitment to learning ( Xueji V), self-discipline ( Xueji VI), enjoyment and diligence in studying ( Xueji VI, IX), and respect for and trust in dao ( Xueji VI, IX).

A rounded education affirms a Confucian mandate for students to transcend theoretical knowledge of dao by appreciating and abiding in it. That mere head knowledge is rejected by Confucius is seen in his call for all to be “a junzi scholar and not a xiaoren scholar” ( Analects 6.13). A junzi (noble or exemplary person) is the educational ideal for all human beings. Such a person is “anxious about dao ” (15.32), “acts in accordance with li ” (15.18), and “does not leave ren even for the space of one meal” (4.5, all from Analects ). On the other hand, a xiaoren , literally means “small person,” refers to an immoral person who is the opposite of a junzi . The “scholar” ( ru ) mentioned in 6.13 is a learned person who specializes in the traditional rituals and texts of the Zhou dynasty (Slingerland, 2003 ). Confucius’ point is that a comprehensive knowledge of rituals and classics, although crucial, is not sufficient to make one a junzi . This is because a scholar could be well versed yet deficient in virtuous character and conduct. What is needed, beyond knowledge acquisition, are the ren -centered motivation and disposition that are displayed through li . Confucius reiterates the deficiency of mere intellectual knowledge in another passage when he asks rhetorically,

[If a person can] recite three hundred poems but is incapable of performing an entrusted official duty and exercising [one’s] initiative when sent abroad, what good are the many poems [to that person]? ( Analects 13.5)

Here Confucius is not claiming that memorizing the poems from Book of Songs (which is one of the Five Classics) is useless. It is noteworthy that he has elsewhere commented, “The poems can give [you] inspiration, observation skill, ability to live with others, and means to express grievances” ( Analects 17.9, also see 16.13, 17.10). What Confucius is saying is that a learner should go beyond rote-memorization to conscientiously and prudently apply the ethical lessons derived from the poems to life’s circumstances and challenges (Tan, 2015a ).

Directed by ren , individuals are encouraged to reinforce and put into practice what they have learned through self-cultivation and social interaction. On self-cultivation, Xueji IX emphasizes the importance of “cultivating [oneself]” by being “‘reverentially committed to and constantly diligent in [learning].” A person self-cultivates by gradually and steadfastly appropriating the symbolic resources and sharable values from dao (Tu, 1985 ) that forms the basis of a Confucian curriculum. Self-cultivation presupposes that the realization of dao depends ultimately on oneself. That success is obtained through nurture (self-cultivation) rather than nature is taught by Confucius, who observes that “human beings are similar in their nature, but differ as a result of their practice” ( Analects 17.2). Going hand in hand with self-cultivation is social interaction through a variety of activities that take place both in and outside the classroom. The Confucian notion of the self is not a ready-made soul but formed and evolved through a “person-making” process (Li, 1999 ). What is envisioned are interdependent and mutually beneficial relationships among members of a community. As noted in Analects : “In desiring to reach a goal, [one] helps others to reach the goal” (6.30) and influences others to “become their best, not their worst” (12.16). Ample opportunities should therefore be given to students in a myriad of learning sites to develop and sustain amicable relationships with others ( Xueji V), hold fellow students in high regard ( Xueji V), select one’s friends wisely ( Xueji V), establish a close and warm relationship with one’s teachers ( Xueji V, XVII, IX), possess a sense of duty ( Xueji VI), enjoy friendship ( Xueji IX), and be willing to learn from one’s peers ( Xueji XI).

Besides being holistic, the curriculum is also broad-based . Analects stresses the primacy of learning widely (e.g., 6.27, 9.2, 19.6) and broadening oneself with culture ( wen ) (9.11). The “culture” mentioned in 9.11 is the normative tradition of dao that is encapsulated in the Zhou dynasty. A broad-based curriculum, therefore, introduces learners to varied defining aspects of Zhou culture, such as its literature, arts, and ceremonies. Rather than narrow subject specialization, Xueji V advocates that students “know the different categories [of knowledge] and obtain gain mastery [in them].” Another passage in the Xueji (VIII) refers to the learning of music (“accomplished in the stringed instruments”), poetry (“accomplished in the Book of Songs”), and rituals (“accomplished in the rituals”). The above domains of learning or subjects are part of the six arts ( liuyi ) in ancient China that consist of rituals, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy or writing, and mathematics (Tan, 2013 ).

The third characteristic of a Confucian curriculum is its integrated nature. The six arts are not unrelated and discrete disciplines, nor are they taught theoretically without real-life application. Instead, the six arts are interconnected, mutually reinforcing, and practice-oriented, with ren -centered li infused into the total curriculum. Confucius gives an example of the integration between archery and rituals:

The junzi are not competitive. If they must compete, it is in archery. [They] bow and make way for each other before ascending [the hall], [they] offer up toasts after descending [the hall] ( Analects 3.7).

We see in the above that even in sports, participants are expected to observe rituals that showcase the ren virtues of courtesy, deference, and sportsmanship. To facilitate the synthesis of subjects, the curriculum should be well-structured and progressive. Xueji V outlines a nine-year program that systematically introduces students to a values-centered, rounded, and comprehensive curriculum. Students start by forming their learning aspirations and learning to analyze texts. They work toward achieving their learning aspirations by being reverentially committed to studying; they also learn collaboratively by being in and enjoying the company of others. They continue to extend their learning and engage in discussions with their teachers and peers. They also build and maintain a close relationship with their teachers as well as make friends judiciously. In the final stage, students further broaden their learning by mastering different categories of knowledge and becoming proficient in learning without regression. It can be observed that the curriculum is structured in such a way that the students learn by “accumulating [what one has learned]” ( Xueji IX), i.e., consolidating and adding to the knowledge base. Xueji XX illuminates the learning process by likening it to an apprentice spending hours on making a sieve before progressing to more complex tasks performed by a skillful bow-maker. The idea of widening and deepening one’s learning from a solid foundational knowledge is also propounded by Confucius. He reminds learners “not to forget what one has acquired monthly” ( Analects 19.5) and “to keep alive the old in order to know the new” ( Analects 2.11).

Teaching Approaches

A learner-centered education is privileged in Confucianism so that human beings can be equipped and empowered to realize and broaden dao . The pedagogies, resources, activities, and learning environments are customized to produce junzi who are filled with ren and conduct themselves in accordance with li . Xueji X disapproves of didacticism where teachers “chant the [texts on the] bamboos” and “advance [the teaching] rapidly without regard for [the students’ abilities to] accomplish [the learning].” The same passage concludes that these teachers “are not sincere in making others [learn], and do not give [their] utmost to [consider the students’] talents when teaching them.” Such teaching is essentially rote-learning that places the teaching content and the teacher rather than the student at the heart of teaching and learning.

Underpinned by a learner-focused education, Xueji XIV urges teachers to be sensitive to the individual needs of students by “knowing [the students’] heart-minds” ( Xueji XIV). The word “heart-mind” ( xin ) in Confucian parlance refers to the harmonization of one’s thinking and feelings. It is the same word used by Confucius when he urges all to “set your heart-mind on dao ” ( Analects 7.6). He also testifies that he has followed his “heart-mind’s desires without overstepping the line” ( Analects 2.4), i.e., without transgressing li . To know the heart-mind of one’s student is to “know [the student’s] difficulty and ease in learning as well as [the student’s] good and bad [qualities]” ( Xueji XVI). The teacher should also “develop what is good [in the students] and rescue [them] from [their] deficiencies” ( Xueji XIV). Another passage advises teachers not to rush into telling students what to do so that the latter’s heart-minds remain undisturbed ( Xueji VI). This implies a teacher who makes a special effort to know the students well, particularly their mental and emotional states, which have a bearing on their learning. Only when a teacher is well acquainted with the students’ personalities, habits, lifestyles, aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses can the teacher “enlighten [the students] extensively [according to their needs]” ( Xueji XVI).

Following the injunction to leave the heart-minds of students undisturbed ( Xueji VI), teachers should refrain from evaluating the students’ learning too early in their studying. This is because early and frequent assessments would only create anxiety in the students and distract them from studying leisurely according to their personal aspirations ( Xueji VI). Instead of formal appraisal, the teacher should just monitor the student’s progress in the cognitive (e.g., ability to analyze texts), affective (e.g., desire to take studying seriously), and behavioral areas (e.g., skill in making friends) ( Xueji V). The objective is for the teacher to be informed of each student’s learning stage, growth, and potential so that the teacher can provide timely and appropriate interventions. Driving home the benefits of teacher observation, Confucius avers that it is “by observing [a person’s] errors [that we] know the degree of ren [in that person] ( Analects 4.7).” A case in point is recorded in Analects . Confucius was initially concerned that his disciple Yanhui was slow in learning, as the latter did not show overt signs of comprehending his teaching. Upon observing Yanhui’s conduct subsequently, Confucius concluded, “When [Yanhui] withdraws and [I] examine [what he does] in private, [I find that he is] able to illustrate [what I have said], so Yanhui is not stupid at all” ( Analects 2.9).

A particular teaching approach that is recommended in Xueji is the “enlightening approach” ( yu ) (Di et al., 2016 ; Tan, 2015b ):

A junzi teaches by yu (enlightening): [leads] the way [for students] without dragging [them]; strengthens [the students] without suppressing [them]; opens [the students’ minds] without arriving [at the conclusion on their behalf] ( Xueji XIII).

This approach enables the teacher to encourage and guide students instead of spoon-feeding or indoctrinating them. The adoption of the enlightening approach does not mean that direct instruction by the teacher is unimportant or jettisoned, since one still needs a tutor’s help in mastering the six arts, such as playing musical instruments and learning calligraphy. Rather, the teaching should be done in such a way that the teacher’s “words are brief yet penetrating, subtle yet appropriate, and sparing in illustrations yet illuminating” ( Xueji XV). The teacher should also inspire students to go beyond learning the contents to developing the dispositions for learning. As noted in Xueji XV, “a skillful teacher is able to motivate others to follow [one’s] aspiration [to learn].” The results are harmony between the teachers and students, effective teaching, and improved learning outcomes ( Xueji XIII).

In employing the enlightening approach, the teacher should not arrive at the conclusion on the students’ behalf. Instead, the teacher should promote reflection and independent thinking in the students ( Xueji XIII). Confucius displays the enlightening approach as follows:

[I] do not enlighten [a person who is] not striving [to understand]; [I] do not provide [the words to a person who is] not already struggling to speak. If [I] have raised one [corner] and [the person] does not come back with the other three [corners], [I] will not [teach that person] again. ( Analects 7.8)

Confucius fosters contemplation and inferential thinking by providing the initial point of learning and expecting the students to make their own deductions and judgments. Reflection and learning are closely intertwined, according to Confucius: “Learning ( xue ) without reflection ( si ) leads to bewilderment; reflection without learning leads to perilousness” ( Analects 2.15). A person who learns without reflection will be perplexed, as such a person has not adequately understood what one has studied. On the other hand, a person who reflects without learning is vulnerable to danger, since such a person lacks the requisite knowledge that is gained through learning to shield oneself from mistakes. The teacher should therefore strike a balance between knowledge transmission and independent thinking. Such a balance is achieved by the teacher supplying the necessary facts and intellectual resources without stifling the students (Tan, 2016a ). It should be added that inviting learners to think for themselves does not mean that all conclusions drawn by students are acceptable or equally valid. A learner-centered Confucian education, including the enlightening approach, is premised on preparing learners to realize and broaden dao . Hence all the deliberations and judgments made by the students (as well as teachers) should be consistent with ren -centered li within the normative tradition of dao .

Xueji further elaborates on the enlightening approach by delineating two teaching strategies for teachers: the questioning technique and peer learning. First, teachers should stimulate student engagement by asking questions and prompting students to do likewise. In responding to the student’s questions, a teacher should not “rely on rote-memorization” ( Xueji XIX), that is, stock answers that do not directly address the questions asked. Instead, the teacher “must listen [to the specific question] and explain [the answer to students]” ( Xueji XIX). That the teacher’s reply should correspond to the exact question asked is illustrated by the analogy of striking a bell. Xueji XVIII states that just as a bell gives a soft sound when it is struck lightly and gives a loud sound when it is struck hard, a skillful teacher is one who “gives [one’s] utmost to articulate [the answer to the specific question].”

In addressing students’ questions, teachers are also reminded not to undermine the student’s independent thinking by being too quick to furnish the answers. Both the teacher and students should instead “talk with each other for a long time,” with the teacher guiding the students to analyze the question, scaffolding their thought processes, and leading them step by step toward the answer ( Xueji XIX). This process is likened to a woodcutter who chops down a tree by first hewing away the easy parts before removing the knotty branches ( Xueji XIX). Xueji includes a caveat that although students are encouraged to ask questions, novice learners are dissuaded from doing so. This is to ensure that they “do not transgress the [proper] grade [they are at] in [their] learning.” ( Xueji VI). This instruction is predicated on the Confucian principles of structured and progressive learning mentioned earlier. Before jumping straight into critical discussions with their peers and teacher, novice learners should devote themselves first to acquiring the foundational knowledge. Otherwise, as cautioned by Confucius, they may shortchange their learning by being impatient and opting for quick results ( Analects 14.44).

Besides using the questioning technique, teachers should also facilitate active student participation through peer learning. Xueji XI proposes the strategy of xiangguan (mutual observation), which refers to students learning from each other through pair or group work. Peer learning takes place when students engage in “discourses on their studies” with their classmates where they demonstrate their ability to reflect on, evaluate, integrate, and apply what they have learned ( Xueji V). In the collaborative process, students listen to and observe one another, correct each other’s faults, share and build on each other’s strengths, and consequently improve themselves. So vital is peer learning that Xueji XII states that “[if a student] learns by oneself without friends, [such a student] will be solitary, uncultured, and limited in knowledge.” The reference to “uncultured” suggests that the purpose of peer learning is not just knowledge acquisition but also the enculturation of ren values, attitudes, dispositions, and conduct. Through peer learning, students are given the platforms to internalize and express instances of li such as “esteeming fellow students” ( Xueji V) and “finding joy in friends” ( Xueji IX). The strategy of “mutual observation” reiterates the centrality of social interaction discussed earlier where a learner “helps others to reach the goal” ( Analects 6.30) and brings out “their best, not their worst” ( Analects 12.16).

Contemporary Relevance

Confucian educational thought and practices have had far-reaching and lasting impact on China and other East Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. Common in these countries are the creation and flourishing of “Confucian pedagogic cultures” (Kim, 2009 ). Despite variations among them, these cultures share the following primary pedagogic patterns: a premium placed on education, high social status of and respect for teachers, student attention and discipline in class, a firm grasp of foundational knowledge, and repeated practice (Tan, 2015b , 2015c ). The Confucian accent on memorization with understanding, reflection, inferential thinking, theory-practice nexus, and peer learning support deep learning, higher-order thinking, lifelong learning, and collaboration—competencies needed by knowledge workers in the 21st century (Tan, 2016a , 2016b ). The seriousness with which East Asians view education, coupled with the high standards of teaching and learning in Confucian Heritage Cultures, has arguably contributed to the impressive performance of these students in international large-scale assessments. For example, Shanghai/China, Hong Kong, Taipei, Korea, Japan, and Singapore were consistently the top performers in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) (OECD, 2015 ; TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Centre, 2016 ).

Against a backdrop of contemporary education being increasingly determined by neoliberal agendas, Confucian beliefs in values inculcation and social interdependence are particularly salient for policymakers and educators. The global educational landscape is saturated with the trends of marketization of education, performativity, and global educational governance by international bodies such as the Organisation for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD). Schools are pressured to “perform” by producing measurable results through standardized testing and external audits. Concomitantly, the major frameworks for 21st-century skills are predominantly skills-based and geared towards economic priorities and quantifiable outcomes (Tan, Chua, & Goh, 2015 ). A ramification of neo-liberalism in education is the marginalization of moral and civic education where the development of ethical and communal values is neglected. This state of affairs is unfortunate, as education should not just be about what a person knows and is able to do, but also, and more importantly, about who that person is and should become. It is therefore pivotal to go beyond skills to cultivate the beliefs, values, attitudes, and dispositions that shape a person’s identity, life goals, relationships with others, and contribution to society. The process of values inculcation necessarily involves the community, since morality originates from and is kept alive by shared standards, social behaviors, logics and ends among members. It is here that a Confucian worldview of education is helpful in shifting our focus from utilitarian, performative, and individualistic concerns to ethical, non-quantifiable, and communitarian goods such as moral self-cultivation, social interdependence, and love for humanity.

Notwithstanding the before-mentioned merits of a Confucian conception of education, a key question is whether such a framework is able to nurture critical and creative thinkers who are empowered to critique prevailing worldviews and effect social changes. Confucius’ statement that he “transmits but does not make; trusts in and loves antiquity” ( Analects 7.1) gives the impression that he aims to preserve rather than reject or replace tradition. The desire to conserve one’s tradition and safeguard social harmony may make it difficult for individuals in Confucian pedagogic cultures to challenge authority and social norms, interrogate assumptions and actions, and undertake risk-taking and unorthodox ventures. So is Confucian education inimical to the development of critical and creative thinking in students? A textual analysis of Xueji and Analects reveals that critical and creative thinking are valued and indispensable in Confucian education. Critical thinking, interpreted broadly as skillful, reflective, and responsible thinking that facilitates judgment is an integral component of Confucian education. We have already noted in Analects that reflection ( si ) is inseparable from learning ( xue ) and that Confucius expects his students to draw their own inferences. A social critic and reformer, Confucius critiques the prevailing worldviews and norms, castigates rulers of his time for violating li and modifies certain social practices to align them with dao (see Analects 3.1, 3.2, 3.10. 3.26, 9.3). Similarly, Xueji enhances students’ critical thinking capacities through approaches such as asking and responding to questions, partaking in deep discussions, and formulating one’s conclusions.

As in the case for critical thinking, creative thinking, understood generally as novel changes or interpretations of experiences, actions, and events, is acknowledged and cherished in Confucian education. The broadening of dao entails not a rigid adherence to conventions and norms but a creative interpretation and appropriation of symbolic resources and ideals for particular problem-situations. Confucius ingeniously borrowed and redefined terms that were in wide circulation, such as li and junzi , by adding novel elements to them. The concept of li was expanded by Confucius from a narrow meaning of ritual propriety to comprise all normative behaviors that are accompanied by corresponding values, attitudes, and dispositions. The term junzi , historically reserved for aristocrats, was re-imagined by Confucius as the educational ideal for everyone, regardless of one’s birth. Furthermore, a junzi is conceived by Confucius as a creative person who “does not insist on certainty [and] is not inflexible” ( Analects 9.4, also see 15.37). Instructively, Analects stresses that a junzi is not “a vessel” ( Analects 2.12). A vessel in ancient China is a receptacle used in ceremonial rituals for specific functions and occasions. A junzi is not a vessel in the sense that such a person is not confined to one function or a fixed way of thinking. Instead, a junzi is capable of performing multiple duties by “going with what is appropriate” ( Analects 4.10), i.e., using one’s discretion to (re)act innovatively in disparate problem-situations. It follows that Confucian learners, in order to behave in accordance with li , must interpret experiences, respond to events, and construct personal meanings thoughtfully and inventively (Tan, 2016c ). Confucius’ pronouncement that he “transmits but does not make; trusts in and loves antiquity” ( Analects 7.1) should therefore be understood as his desire to transmit dao (rather than any Chinese tradition or discourse) and his trust in and love of Zhou culture (rather than the ancient past in general). His claim that he is a transmitter of dao does not imply that he views dao as complete and cast in stone. On the contrary, he contributes considerably to the normative tradition of dao by propagating not just the culture of the Zhou dynasty but also selected values and practices from the Xia and Yin dynasties ( Analects 15.11) (Tan, 2016d ). Analects 7.1 needs to be read in conjunction with Analects 15.29, where human beings are entrusted with the task of transmitting and broadening dao . It follows that critical and creative thinking should be extended to dao itself, where learners reflect on their prior conception of dao and purposefully co-construct a (better) vision of human excellence and guiding discourse for their fellow human beings.

To engender and buttress a culture that nurtures critical and creative thinking, it is imperative for policymakers, scholars, and educators to approach Confucian education as an open tradition . Such a tradition interacts with other traditions, learns from all sources, and adapts to changing times. By inviting its adherents to critique their own social norms, presuppositions and way of life as well as consider alternatives and better ideas, the normative tradition of dao is extended and refined. Confucius alludes to an open tradition when he teaches that we should be prepared to learn from anyone: “When walking with two other persons, [I am] bound to find a teacher among them: [I] choose to follow the good person, and correct [myself] when [I am] with a person who is not good” ( Analects 7.22). He also evinces open-mindedness by eschewing certainty, dogmatism, and inflexibility in favor of that which is desirable and productive ( Analects 7.28, 9.4, 14.32). Analects also portrays a junzi as a humble person who is receptive to new ideas, tools, and methods to arrive at good judgments ( Analects 4.10, 13.26, 15.18).

Being open to other traditions has the added advantage of assisting individuals to identify and rectify the shortcomings of oneself and one’s culture. An example is the research finding that East Asians tend to be strong in incremental and process innovation as well as “imitation behavior,” but relatively weak in questioning existing structures and generating invention and breakthroughs (Tan, 2016c ). One way to enrich the understandings, forms, and expressions of critical and creative thinking in Confucian pedagogic cultures is to explore modes of thinking and operations from other cultures, such as Socratic questioning and design thinking, that are more commonly found in Anglo-American societies. Such cross-cultural exchanges, dialogues, and problem-solving are in tandem with Confucian education as an open tradition that welcomes alternatives, new inputs, and external stimuli. Overall, an open tradition heeds the call of Confucius to broaden dao by sharing in and advancing the best of the spiritual, social, political, intellectual, and moral resources from one’s tradition. Confucian education becomes a dynamic and self-correcting process where teachers and students, individually and collectively, make sense of, adapt, and rework the normative tradition in light of the potentialities of present science and technology (Tan, 2012 , 2016b ).

Conclusions

Confucianism is currently enjoying a revival in China, due in no small part to the Chinese government’s appropriation and recasting of neo-Confucian doctrine as a formal state ideological position. An evidence of the official endorsement of Confucianism was a speech made by Chinese President Xi Jinping at an international symposium to commemorate the 2,565th anniversary of the birth of Confucius in which he supports the transmission of Confucian tenets ( Xinhuashe , 2014 ). In the context of education policy, the Ministry of Education in China has advocated the teaching of Confucianism in schools as part of the transmission of traditional Chinese culture. An official document titled “Notice by the Ministry of Education on the Issuance of the ‘Synopsis of the Education Guide on Perfecting Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture’” calls schools to “deeply excavate and elucidate China’s excellent traditional values by articulating benevolence, valuing the citizens, abiding in integrity, upholding uprightness, treasuring harmony, and seeking common ground” (Ministry of Education, 2014 ).

So has the resurgence of Confucianism in China resulted in a wide application and dissemination of the educational philosophy and practices of Confucianism as outlined in Analects and Xueji ? On the one hand, the renewed interest in Confucianism has led to greater attention and resources being directed to the learning of Confucian teachings through various avenues. A noteworthy nationwide initiative is guoxue (National Chinese Cultural Course), which was popularized by classes started by elite universities such as Beijing University and a primetime program on Analects (Yu, 2008 ). Schools have also relied on Confucian pedagogies such as the enlightening approach for their curriculum reform and introduced Confucian classics and rites to their students as part of their school-based curriculum (Tan, 2016b , 2016e ). However, we should not be overly optimistic about the prospect of a comprehensive and integrated promotion of Confucian principles and procedures in schools and society. A perennial obstacle is the pervasive exam-oriented mindset that propels educators, students, and parents to focus on exam techniques, didactic teaching, test scores, and college-entrance rates. Such a worldview vitiates the successful enactment of Confucian educational ideas such as holistic and broad-based education, learner-centered strategies, and interactive classrooms. In addition, the decision by the Chinese government to endorse elements of Confucianism has received a mixed reception, given the controversies over how Confucianism was historically used by dynastic rulers for political legitimacy and the backlash against Confucianism during the Cultural Revolution. Unsurprisingly, scholars such as Wu ( 2014 ) and Ford ( 2015 ) have contended that the Chinese Communist Party’s deployment of Confucianism is targeted at securing its cultural leadership, rationalizing continued one-party rule, and discrediting Western ideals of democratic pluralism.

It remains to be seen whether the present reinvention of Confucianism as a state ideology and the public popularization of Confucianism in China will lead to a renaissance of Confucianism that adheres to the desired outcomes, principles, and lifestyles as explicated in Analects and Xueji . This article has explained that a central aim of Confucian education is for learners to apprehend and expand dao through ren -centered li . A Confucian curriculum is essentially holistic, comprehensive, and integrated. A holistic curriculum emphasizes students’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains. Learners are called to internalize and apply the contents learned through self-cultivation and social interaction. The curriculum is also broad-based; students learn the six arts of rituals, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics. Furthermore, the curriculum is designed in such a way that the students learn systematically and progressively by constantly building upon, synthesizing, and putting into practice what they have studied. Teaching and learning are learner-focused, and the teacher responds empathetically to the individual needs of students. In the recommended “enlightening approach,” the teacher encourages independent thinking and guides students using the questioning technique and peer learning. Confucian education also fosters critical and creative thinking, as modeled by Confucius himself; he challenged the political leaders and convention of his time as well as strove to transform his society through a return to and continual (re)creation of dao . An open tradition ensures that Confucian education is not essentialized, static, and fossilized. Instead, it is diverse, fluid, and evolving, offering an educational paradigm that is rounded, ethical, universal, and ultimately enduring.

Further Reading

• Di, X. , Liuxin, Y. , McEwan, H. , & Ames, R. T. (Trans.) (2016). On teaching and learning (Xueji). In X. Di & H. McEwan (Eds.). (2016). Chinese philosophy on teaching and learning: Xueji in the twenty-first century (pp. 9–18). Albany: State University of New York.
• Tan, C. (2013). Confucius . London: Bloomsbury.
• Ames, R. T. , & Rosemont, H. (Trans.) (1998). The Analects of Confucius: A philosophical translation . New York: Ballantine Books.
• Chan, A. K. L. (2000). Confucian ethics and the critique of ideology. Asian Philosophy , 10 (3), 245–261.
• Chinese Text Project . (2016a). The Analects .
• Chinese Text Project (2016b). Xue Ji .
• Cua, A. S. (1989). The concept of li in Confucian moral theory. In R. E. Allison (Ed.), Understanding the Chinese mind: The philosophical roots (pp. 209–235). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
• Di, X. , Liuxin, Y. , McEwan, H. , & Ames, R. T. (Trans.) (2016). On teaching and learning ( Xueji ). In X. Di & H. McEwan (Eds.). (2016). Chinese philosophy on teaching and learning: Xueji in the twenty-first century (pp. 9–18). Albany: State University of New York.
• Ford, C. A. (2015). The Party and the Sage: Communist China’s use of quasi-Confucian rationalizations for one-party dictatorship and imperial ambition. Journal of Contemporary China , 24 (96), 1032–1047.
• Hall, D. L. , & Ames, R. T. (1987). Thinking though Confucius . Albany: State University of New York.
• Hansen, C. (1989). Language in the heart-mind. In R. E. Allison (Ed.), Understanding the Chinese mind: The philosophical roots (pp. 75–124). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
• Kim, T. (2009). Confucianism, modernities and knowledge: China, South Korea and Japan. In R. Cowen & A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 857–872). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
• Lau, D. C. (Trans.) (1979). Confucius: The Analects . Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin.
• Legge, J. (1885). The sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism. Part IV: The li ki , XI–XLVI . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Li, C. (1999). The Tao encounters the West: Explorations in comparative philosophy . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Ministry of Education (2014). Jiaoyubu guanyu yinfa “wanshan zhonghua youxiu chuantong wenhua jiaoyu zhidao gangyao” de tongzhi [Notice by the Ministry of Education on the issuance of the “Synopsis of the education guide on perfecting Chinese excellent traditional culture”].
• OECD . (2015). Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) .
• Slingerland, E. (Trans.) (2003). Confucius Analects: With selections from traditional commentaries . Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
• Tan, C. (2015a). Beyond rote-memorisation: Confucius’ concept of thinking . Educational Philosophy and Theory , 47 (5), 428–439.
• Tan, C. (2015b). Teacher-directed and learner-engaged: Exploring a Confucian conception of education . Ethics and Education , 10 (3), 302–312.
• Tan, C. (2015c). Education policy borrowing and cultural scripts for teaching in China . Comparative Education , 51 (2), 196–211.
• Tan, C. (2016a). Beyond “either-or” thinking: John Dewey and Confucius on the subject matter and the learner. Pedagogy, Culture and Society , 24 (1), 55–74.
• Tan, C. (2016b). Educational policy borrowing in China: Looking West or looking East? New York: Routledge.
• Tan, C. (2016c). Understanding creativity in East Asia: Insights from Confucius’ concept of junzi . International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation , 4 (1), 51–61.
• Tan, C. (2016d). A Confucian conception of critical thinking . Journal of Philosophy of Education , 51 (1), 1–12.
• Tan, C. (2016e). Teacher agency and school-based curriculum in China’s non-elite schools . Journal of Educational Change , 17 (3), 287–302.
• Tan, C. , Chua, C. S. K. , & Goh, O. (2015). Rethinking the framework for 21st-century education: Toward a communitarian conception . The Educational Forum , 79 (3), 307–320.
• Tan, S.-H. (2012). The pragmatic Confucian approach to tradition in modernising China. History and Theory , 51 (4), 23–44.
• TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Centre (2016). TIMSS 2015 and TIMSS advanced 2015 international results .
• Tu, W. (1985). Confucian thought: Selfhood as creative transformation . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Wong, W. S. (1976). The Hsüeh Chi , an old Chinese document on education. History of Education Quarterly , 16 (2), 187–193.
• Wu, S. (2014). The revival of Confucianism and the CCP’s struggle for cultural leadership: A content analysis of the People ’ s Daily , 2000–2009. Journal of Contemporary China , 23 (89), 971–991.
• Xinhuashe (2014, September 24). Xijinping chuxi jinian Kongzi danchen 2565 zhounian guoji xueshu yantaohui bing fabiao zhongyao jianhua [Xi Jinping attended an international symposium to commemorate the 2565th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and delivered an important speech]. Available online .
• Yu, T. (2008). The revival of Confucianism in Chinese schools: A historical-political review. Asia Pacific Journal of Education , 28 (2), 113–129.

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